The 99th Arrest Warrant
by Yukihana-kun
Summary: Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba both get into The University of Tokyo. After they graduate, Kudo goes after Kaitou Kid for three entire years. When the 98th arrest warrant ends with failure, Kuroba decides to quit and go into jewlery appraisal business. Their lives should have had no intersections starting from that point forward, until—the 99th arrest warrant! Mission accomplished!
1. Chapter 0

There is minimal minimal romantic/love element in this story if one considers there to be any at all(pairings: ShinRan KaiAo). If there was a Genre 3, then I'd put Friendship.

There are a few original characters in this story, although I don't believe that they take the main characters' spotlight as they do exist for certain purposes; that is, to push the plot along.

It may help to question every step of the plot as it progresses, although I have to say that the truth is quite extraordinary.

I originally wrote this in Chinese: 能读中文的可以在晋江文学城或者白熊阅读搜索作者雪间蝉，文名第99道捉贼令

Chapter 13 is the ending, and the epilogue consists of 5 parts. The main story is written in third-person, and the epilogue is mostly first-person though the 5th part happens to be all in third-person. Generally speaking, a chapter is on average about 1.5 times the length of chapter 0.

I do not guarantee the frequency of my updates for it took me some time to write this story in the first place, so it'll also take me some time to translate everything.

I will make minor edits from time to time, and I do plan on making more significant edits in the future.

If you like what you read—remember to follow, fav, and review!

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On desolated grassland, there's a little boy who's continuously pushing wild grasses aside and walking towards the endless front; until that one moment, he suddenly stops. Throughout the process of forwarding, he originally had no intent of minding what his surroundings are like; only now when he recalls, these grasses seem to have somehow gotten harder to push aside and forwarding has become increasingly difficult. After a round of careful observance does he realize grasses seem to be denser and taller.

He sits down in effort to calm down and think, wanting to ignore the suspicion within and put all of his heart on finding somewhere that's truly flat, but then realizes not only is the growing speed of grasses abnormal but so is the color; these grasses are black. When he tilts his head up, he can see a whole patch of sky colored with a grayish-purple. Not knowing what kind of creepy dark place this is, one always feels some sort of pressure coming from ahead; not to mention, who knows why there hasn't been any encounter with any human nor even any animals.

The more he thinks the more frustrated he becomes, yet he doesn't know what to do, but were he to continue to waste time it would do no good anyway. So he starts to get up and coincidentally at that moment when he gets up, he sees that there is a familiar shadow of a human not far away.

"Dad!" He runs towards that shadow without thinking too much.

"Dad...?"

Yet when he hugs it, that shadow immediately disappears with the wind like mist without leaving any trace; and this is when he finally realizes, that black shadow was never human. Grasses beneath him instantly grow to support him so that he leaves the ground, other grasses around him each become a sharp knife one after another, while the rest entangle and connect with one another to become a sphere which quickly encircles and traps him in.

"Kuroba-kun?!" He has half gained consciousness when he hears someone calling his name. "Kuroba! Kaito Kuroba-kun! Please wake up already!"

"Ug..."

"Class is already over, now when do you think you're gonna keep sleeping till?!"

Kaito Kuroba looks at the clock and finally realizes that he slept for an entire class period, and now it's already time for lunch. He yawns and stretches, and then goes to the cafeteria.

The professor sees Kuroba and gets even more annoyed. He doesn't care if this Kuroba-kun tested into University of Tokyo with an exceptional score or not. It's just the first day of college and this student has already got enough guts to sleep during class, oh he'll see how that'll work out in the future.

After that dream he somehow didn't feel like eating, so he brought a curry bread to eat when he gets hungry and returned to class. Besides not feeling like eating, he also has a headache for some reason; maybe it's because yesterday night, he was too active. But then again, that dream was so obscure; at the time he didn't even recognize it was a dream, also the fear and pain was so real.

When Kaito Kuroba thought about these things, a loud gush of sounds suddenly travels from outside the classroom into his ears; it appears as if the source of most sounds are girls. Due to motivation of curiosity, he leans towards a window to oversee the general conditions. Most people are eagerly discussing some stuff, while a small portion of people are just too excited to the point that they scream.

Kuroba was wondering what it was, until the name Shinichi Kudo travels into his ear. Not much later does he catch a peek of that familiar face. When he does he subconsciously decides to go back to his seat, put his head down, and pretend to take a nap.

Nope, this isn't being afraid; after all, a law major student shouldn't have much contact with them physics major students, and Kudo doesn't even know that Kaito Kuroba is Kaitou Kid so it's not like Kudo can do anything with him. It's just that, he feels like whenever they face each other nothing good happens. But seriously, why did he forget that this guy returned to Tokyo half a year ago.

Oh well, after all it was him who used darts to decide to attend this school. At this point of the game, he just has to put up with it.

On the other hand, when Shinichi Kudo passes by the classroom that Kaito Kuroba is in and sees that hair that's even messier than his, he feels that it's somehow familiar; except, he couldn't quite figure where he had seen the bell rings and Kuroba comes out of the classroom does Kudo recall, just last night he had a dream full of fantasy and illusion—it was in that dream did he see a silhouette of a person, a figure that was nearly if not completely the same as this person before his eyes now—

He gradually opens his eyes, only to see that his surroundings are a clear blue; but this blue, although it refreshes and gladdens one's heart, also lets one feel difficulty breathing as if asphyxiating. The ears also hurt due to the immensity of the water pressure. Kudo moves his hand a little bit. This cold temperature and feeling of flowing...also when he looks among the distance he cannot see an end, so he must be drifting in the sea.

He sees the color of the water start to shift, changing darker in color, and now finally realizes that he's slowly sinking.

Except he has no more strength to move his arms or legs, no more strength to swim knowing how long has passed and not knowing why he has ended up here, all Kudo felt was that a long period of time has already passed. Breathing is still that complicated and the ears still hurt a lot, but life still continues, along with this pain.

Maybe at the same time that he got used to the feeling he also got bored of it, of living as if he's dying; so he decides to stop struggling to breath once and for all. He lets frustration go along with the water to somewhere far away. Until some time when he doesn't even realize, asphyxia and pain all vanished. He emptied himself, no longer thinking of those complicated details like usual, no longer having being driven by hot-bloodedness, just finding peace with tranquility of the heart and having the most important people appear in his mind from time to time.

Suddenly, the water grabs Kudo's arms and legs as if it is alive, forcibly bringing him to somewhere while he still has no power to struggle. Until he sees a silhouette of a human a few meters away from himself does he stop, except he still couldn't freely move. The water pushes him closer and closer to that silhouette, closer and closer, until now their distance between each other is less than half a meter. Kudo carefully observes this silhouette, and figures it to be pretty similar to himself from its built to shape of face, etc.

The only difference is the hairstyle, in fact it's messier than his indeed. When Kudo had thought so, the water flow mercilessly pushes them from two sides until they get closer and closer. All Kudo sees before his eyes is sudden darkness, as if he passed through the silhouette. In addition to that, his arms and legs got stabbed by some unknown sharp object as if fixing the silhouette and him together.

Fresh red blood instantly mixes into the sea, flowing to unknown places, and saltwater has come in contact with his cuts. He has no idea what numbed his senses; he did not feel pain because of this. Within short time, Kudo hears the breathing of a huge object; it is the smell of blood which has attracted a shark. It instantly devours Kudo and that silhouette who were surrounded by the bloody smell.

This, is when he woke up—

That instant in between lunch and the start of class, he did not see the full face of that person but he did see his face from the side; somehow, it seemed oddly very familiar.

He thinks in detail, and reaches the conclusion that it's somehow very similar to the face of himself who he sees in the mirror everyday.

Was he thinking too much?

"Probably." Kaito Kuroba thinks to himself when he slightly arranges his hairstyle in front of the mirror after washing his hands.

That guy probably just stopped because he saw some acquaintance, it wasn't like Kudo was looking at him or anything.

Anyhow, just let Kaito Kuroba and Shinichi Kudo's knowledge of each other stay the way it is now.


	2. Chapter 1

Time swings by quickly, before one can notice one year has already passed.

After finishing his freshman year of college, Shinichi accepted the invitation to transfer to The Metropolitan Police Academy of Tokyo; Kaito Kuroba felt that the weight on his shoulders was lightened a bit as a result. He knew it from the start, that stubborn Detective-san would either open his own detective agency or go into the police force; anyway, Kudo just has to be on his opposite side, the only difference is that Kudo'll be the one commanding operations.

But that guy will probably stick with Division 1 of the Criminal Investigation Section which he is the most familiar with and unmask some murder cases, so he probably won't be responsible for criminal masterminds like Kaitou Kid.

College passes by much quicker than imagined, four years fly by in an instant never to return.

Originally with cases like Kudo, he should have to graduate a year later than Kuroba, but Superintendent General Hakuba values exception personnel and wanted Kudo to be of his use as soon as possible. Additionally, Kudo himself already accumulated quite some real deal experiences, so it was specially arranged that a year would be subtracted from his required years.

Kuroba could not have envisioned it, that ever since he started being frequently active in Tokyo there would be such a course of action by which Division 2 specially invites Kudo as the chief commander of operations.

All he does is just appear once in a while and steal a few gems; plus, when he discovers that a gem isn't the Pandora Gem, he does return it. What in the world has he done that could require a Division 1 personnel who specializes in violent crimes to get involved with arresting him?

Even so, Kudo continues to go after him for three years; within this time period, there's altogether ninety-eight arrest warrants for him and every time it ends upon failure.

And then Kudo never held an arrest warrant against Kaitou Kid again, because this phantom thief started frequently appearing in foreign countries. Even when he was in Japan he would rarely visit Tokyo, and the gems that he steals, he would not return; it was the same as nearly two decades ago.

After the sixth year of graduation, Kudo was already successful in both his work and marriage. Him now has already sat on the inspector's seat for two years; he has also been married to Ran for four years.

As for Kaito Kuroba, he stored his heart for mere play away and went into the jewelry appraisal business. After having entered the profession for three years, he earned some money and has now been married to Aoko for two years.

This night, Kaito got invited to a jewelry exhibition. The moment when he first entered, he could see gorgeous lights shining upon the dazzling diamond. That light sky blue and those excellent incision angles, what a perfection.

The light sudden darkens accompanied by silence when a few moments ago the place was filled by all sorts of human voices. Glass shatters and breaks the silence. When light brightens again, that blue diamond has already fallen into the air along with someone dressed in white. It seems as though he'll soon make contact with the ground, yet a sly smile appears on his face.

Smoke spreads in all directions while there's nowhere to find that person, as if he vanished in midair.

But none of this can fool Kaito Kuroba, because besides from Toichi Kuroba, he's more familiar with that white clothing than anyone else.

He quickly runs from the abandoned stairway to the top of the building when the security guards don't take notice of him. He lifts his head up as he's still panting; as he expected, that guy is currently using a silver-colored hand glider to roam the skies.

Yep, that's Kaitou Kid's clothing and hand glider which bear great resemblance, but that guy isn't him; nor would the guy be his father who's far away overseas.

At this point in time, some sounds start bothering his ears. He looks around and realizes that there's a few helicopters circling this area, which must have been commissioned by the Metropolitan Police Department for chasing after Kaitou Kid. Except the speed that they came at leads him wondering, were they prepared ahead of time? Seems as if they had been waiting for whenever Kaitou Kid shows up.

The volume of the helicopter sound becomes bigger, so Kuroba turns and sees that there's a helicopter gradually heading for the top of this building.

When it lands, Kuroba sees a familiar figure climb out from it; it's Shinichi Kudo, the current inspector of Subdivision 3 of Violent Crimes in Division 1 of the Criminal Investigation Section. With his hands in his pockets, he calmly approaches Kuroba with no haste.

"You're Kaito Kuroba from the University of Tokyo."

That certainty in his tone along with this leisurely attitude, somehow makes Kuroba feel a little anxious and panicked despite all that he has seen amongst the world.

"About where Kid went, can you provide any clues for me?"

"That way." Cold sweat gradually drips down from Kuroba's face. "He jumped down from the thirtieth floor where the exhibition was held, and he vanished when he was about to hit the floor. In reality, he fled in that direction by using his hand glider."

Without being dressed in white, Kuroba is different from the phantom thief that he used to be, he's just a normal civilian now.

"Thank you." Kudo who wears a smile and appears to be very friendly this second immediately puts on his serious inspector mask the next second. "All pilots be aware, Kid has fled in the southwest direction, we must catch him." Kudo and the pilot who sits next to him has already left the top of the building. "I repeat, we must capture Kaitou Kid."

This time, it's the ninety-ninth arrest warrant, but the criminal who they're going after is instead an imposter using Kaitou Kid's name.

Even so, that guy s ability level is enough to suggest some trouble on Kudo's hands.

Who in the world is he, and what does he want from impersonating Kid—

"Kid...you're not gonna escape this time. Kid!"

Kudo wakes up and sees that he's dressed in a hospital gown full of sweat. There's also a smell of disinfectants surrounding him, so he just realizes that he had a dream and that he's in the hospital now.

He has no idea how long he was unconscious for, all he knows is that the last thing he was doing before he lost his consciousness was tugging on Kid's cape.

He sees that the few cuts on his body have pretty much healed by now, except he still feels dizzy and his head is heavy.

Recalling the day Kid appeared, Shinichi Kudo can remember chasing closely after him. Both Division 1 and Division 2 followed orders and tried to help trap him, but then someway somehow Kid was able to rid himself of most of them. In the end, there was just this one small subgroup that Kudo led himself. When they got into a blind alley, Kid quickly threw out some smoke grenades and poker cards.

Those poker cards made quite a number of wounds to their bodies, but they were not hesitant to take the pain and charge. However during the process of chasing him, one by one they started to fall down; in fact, the quicker one ran, the faster one fell. It was then did Kudo realize, those darts made to look like poker cards were also coated with something like anaesthetics.

His string of thoughts suddenly get interrupted by the sounds of footsteps at a quick pace, and when Kudo hears it, he couldn't care less if the doctor wanted him to rest or not. He directly runs out while still in his hospital gown and gets on a car.

"Inspector Kudo?!"

"It's Kid isn't it? Now don't waste time."

"...Got it!"

At this point, there's already a few police officers hidden at the dock awaiting for Kid. For some reason, may it be due to the lack of rest or not, they feel sleepier and sleepier during the wait.

"Hmph..." A creepy smile appears on the face of a man who had been spying on them from nearby. He reaches and pulls out a handgun which he carefully wipes. Then, his finger uncontrollably touches the trigger, and he slowly points the gun towards people lying on the ground.

Then he hears a voice behind him say: "Put your hands up!"

The man dressed in all white from head to toe turns around without hurry and then points his gun at Kudo.

He did not receive any command saying that he could kill, but that animal instinct in him urges for him to commit murder. Maybe he got too excited and caught up in the thought of painting his white clothes red with splotches of blood to the point that his keenness diminished. He didn't even realize ahead of time that there's still an abundance of people.

"Think before you act!" says Kudo. Except from the fact that this man decides to pull a policeman aside and point the gun towards his head, it's clear that this man won't listen to anything.

He lets out a cold "heh" and backs into a dead angle of their perspective along with the hostage. Only when a significant distance has come between him and them does he warn people who try to move by saying: "Do not follow."

Every step that this thief dressed in white clothing takes serves to hide him deeper in the dark, along with that hostage who wears a sakura-shaped badge.

"Before stealing the gem, you did not sent out a warning letter in advance," says Kaito Kuroba when he suddenly appears from behind the man dressed in white. "You used real weapons to hurt others," says Kuroba as he takes a few steps forward. "Your magic tricks are performed basically by just smoke grenades, and you're even wearing the monocle before the wrong eye. He walks to about five meters away from the man and stops to tell him "should be this side" as he points to his right eye.

This is when the man dressed in white realizes that this face, the way he speaks, to be exact this annoying feeling, it's somewhat familiar.

Then, smoke fills up the place.

"Damn it," thinks the man to himself. "Where did that damn guy go?"

"Hey, Mr. Imposter." After the smoke dissipates, the man dressed in white sees Kuroba standing at the same exact location he was at while playfully spinning a handgun in his hand. "If you're gonna use someone else's name, you might as well perform to at least this level."

Only now does the man realize that the gun that he held has disappeared. Damn it, he honestly had no idea when it got stolen by the guy. So he quickly reaches for the spare gun hidden in the inner pocket of his shirt.

"The guns are of fine quality." The man dressed in white sees that the damn guy happens to be spinning a gun with his other hand as well. "Unfortunately." He blows on the surface of one of the guns. "The person who uses them has insufficient skills." He takes out a piece of cloth and wipes it.

Without any weapons left to fight with, the only choice the man has left is to use the last smoke grenade that he has on him, then he leaves the hostage by the side and escapes. After running for a little bit, the man turns at a corner and hears someone coming for him by running on top of the shipping containers. That person jumps down and lands right in front of him, blocking his way.

"You're not escaping." It's still that damn guy from before, and the thing is that the guy dares to actually pat his shoulder after talking.

The man dressed in white heard what was said and decides to not take the advice by running in another direction. Surprisingly, the guy doesn't come chase after him, but instead stays at the same location. He wasn't expecting it, but they had escape-proof nets waiting for him.

"Mission accomplished, all members come and report to section A." says Inspector Kudo who's still wearing a hospital gown and slippers while drenched in sweat.

When just about everyone has reported, Kudo turns around and walks towards Mr. Thief. Then Kudo gets down to help him take off the net on his head since his arms aren't free, also his hat and monocle. "Well, Kaitou-san isn't so invincible after all."

This night has tired Kudo out, and so he returns back into his hospital bed. Except, the tiredness of the body doesn't stop the brain to continue to function adequately.

He knew it from very beginning when he put forward the ninety-ninth arrest warrant that the targeted thief wasn't the real Kid, so even when the mission was a success he still wonders when he can put the actual Kaitou-san behind bars.

As he thinks of this, he quickly enters dreamland—

Ever since the fake Kid was arrested, a week has already passed and he has been out of the hospital for five days, yet Kudo still feels extremely exhausted.

Maybe work is part of the reason, and maybe age as well, but according to checkup results before he left the hospital he should have fully recovered by now.

Even if the intensity of the workload has caused his body to feel at unease, it shouldn't be to the point of falling asleep many times when he had no means of doing so. It most definitely shouldn't be to the degree of suddenly going unconscious during the course of walking when only one week has passed. Not to mention, every time his blood pressure is measured when he's unconscious it always ends up being with the normal range, so it shouldn't be anything like hypotension.

After knowing of Shinichi having these abnormal body conditions, Ran would prepare all three meals in bento boxes for him and bring them to him, so it wouldn't be any problems caused by unusual diet patterns.

Ever since the night that the fake Kid stole the blue diamond, his health somehow degraded to this degree, but it shouldn't be the residual effects of the anaesthetic.

So then, what is the cause?


	3. Chapter 2

Well, here comes one of the most important chapters of the whole story : )

Please do ask if you're really confused about something, I can pretty much guarantee you that there's gonna be more than just one occasion of that. Of course, there are some details that I prefer to keep a secret until it is revealed for the sake of mystery, but I can absolutely help with sorting out the logic or sequencing of plot as that may not be so evident with my style of writing and stuff.

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Kudo rarely gets any chance to go home for once, so when he does he arrives home with joy, except there's no one to welcome him. Then he sees a post-it note on the refrigerator which has the conditions of ingredients listed on it, and he recalls Ran telling him in the morning to take care of himself when she's not around him. Also some time before that, she did mention that she already agreed to take a break and go out with Sonoko and others.

After lying down on the bed, stuff that circulates in Kudo's brain is still those cases; when he thinks of them, he eventually falls asleep.

Tonight, Kaito Kuroba finally has the time to sleep well instead of engaging in some sort of social event, yet he somehow cannot fall asleep no matter how much he turns and tosses in bed. Maybe it's because for all these years, he already got used to nightly activity.

The morning sun flashes upon his face and Kaito immediately wakes up from light sleep. He half-consciously starts getting ready for the day. As he gets ready, as if suddenly drawn in by the person in the mirror, his eyes directly stare at the mirror before him.

He lays his pointer finger upon the mirror face, and little by little he slowly draws out an outline of the obviously tired-out handsome man before his eyes. The only imperfection of this beauty is the hairstyle, he probably messed it up when turning and tossing around in bed, and so he straightens it. Suddenly a thought flashes through his mind, he suspects that something isn't right. When he carefully looks at the person in the mirror, for an instant he thought that he saw that guy—just kidding, that can't be it. It must be because lately he's seen that face, that arrogant face, too often. On top of that, he's still half asleep after just waking up; that must be the reason as to why there's this illusion.

If it's an illusion, it's strange that it would occur so oftenly.

Kudo rests his elbow on an office table and has the back of his hands hold up his chin as he thinks to himself. Then his eyelids eventually fall and close followed by the drooping down of his head.

"Inspector," says an officer as he enters with a stack of newspapers and information after knocking on the door. He sees that Kudo has fallen asleep and doesn't dare to bother. He just quietly places the stuff on the table.

A few moments pass, Kudo's full body falls down and hits that stack of information, awaking him. The first thing that appears before his eyes are newspapers about societal events. In the midst of a hazed vision, his eyes haven't completely opened yet, but he seems to have caught a glance of a headline about a mysterious missing person case. When he takes a more careful look, he discovers that the first few words of the headline read "University of Tokyo Professor".

He was unconscious when this professor went missing, till now it has already been eight full days since the disappearance.

It's a very normal thing to predict that the professor might already be dead since quite a bit of time has passed, except they haven't yet found his body.

If he remembers correctly, Shinsanrou Suzukawa was a newcomer to the university when his freshman year was about to end. He's a Professor of Cell and Molecular Bioscience at the University of Tokyo, and before this he used to teach Computer Science and Engineering at Waseda University.

Also, if he remembers correctly—

"As I suspected," Kudo thinks to himself when he discovers Professor Suzukawa's information from the pile. This professor has a special interest for genomics, and somehow although he hasn't met Suzukawa in person before, he does feel as if the appearance is rather familiar.

Thinking of which, if he never met the real person, how would he have known that Shinsanrou Suzukawa has a special interest in genomics?

He should've fallen into unconsciousness on the night of the encounter with the fake Kid ten days ago, then three days later he woke up. The week after the mission was accomplished, he would somehow oftenly have moments which he cannot recall. Yet the day of the mission, and before that there was nothing wrong.

Which means this abnormal mental condition of his, indeed started after that night.

Suzukawa should have came when he only had a month and a half left of his freshman year, and within this period of time he never met with Suzukawa. Not to mention, he rarely got in contact with any of the other more experienced biology teachers at the University of Tokyo that year.

At that timing, Suzukawa's predecessor unfortunately died due to illness. The university, which had already been considered hiring Suzukawa, thought it through and decided that the sooner they fill the spot up the better, so it was almost an immediate appointment for Suzukawa.

That's all that he knows about Suzukawa, but the fact that he knew about Suzukawa's special interest and the fact that Suzukawa didn't show that interest until recent two years...

Could it be—

No, he must be overthinking it.

Shinichi Kudo takes out a small notepad and scribbles some things in it. He then rips the page out, makes a ball with it, and places it in his pocket. Trying to make good use of his time as he's still awake, he then goes on to sort out some cases.

Yet somehow, as he works his train of thoughts always seem to end up on the disappearance of Suzukawa. That barely covered head, that friendly face, that sort of plump appearance—and that calm and steady way of talking, there's no doubt that he has definitely seen that professor before.

He suddenly gets up and walks into the men's restroom. Only a dim sunlight is left in the afternoon sky, shining through the glass window, then onto the floor and sink. In this dark environment he puts his head down, stares the faucet which reflects his look, and eventually raises his head up. Here, at this moment, he cannot hear human voices which sometimes become ruckus. All he does is merely listen to the sound of water drops coming out the faucet, wanting to let his heart go free along with this water flow and settle with this silence peace, and not wanting to think so intensively.

Yet when looking at this person in the mirror, he just can't control his brain from continuing to think even if he feels as if it's about to explode, only to get a answer that makes sense.

In one moment, grayish-purple sky and black ground wash apart a reddish sapphire. Two completely different yet so similar scenes overlap in the mind.

"This can t be."

After hearing a voice that's not his own yet sort of familiar, Kudo just feels as if his body starts to go out of control. His right hand takes that piece of notepad paper out of the pocket without his will. He looks over the writing on the wrinkled paper with a horrified expression, uncontrollably holds his fists tight and starts attacking that wicked mirror forcefully, and doesn't stop until his hands become sort of red and swollen.

However despite the fact that he gave it all, he still didn't inflict any damage to the mirror, not even a little bit.  
After calming down, he still has to return back to the mirror. He doesn't know for sure if he cannot feel anything with his hands because of simply just numbness due to pain. He places his right hand on the human figure before the mirror, and continues to hold his left hand tightly.

This is when he realizes, the person standing before this mirror is neither Shinichi Kudo nor Kaito Kuroba.

No, to be more exact, he's Shinichi Kudo and he's also Kaito Kuroba.

A sudden thunder strikes outside, although not a tiny bit of rain does fall—thus a dry thunderstorm.

Now he remembers, in fact he was never unconscious for as long as three days continuously—

The result of going after Kid ten days ago was that all members of the subgroup including him fell unconscious due to the anaesthetic, forcing an end to the operation, and thus resulted in the failure of the mission that day. But the effect of the anaesthetic couldn't have been that strong, it shouldn't have kept him unconscious for as long as three days. The injuries caused by the darts would not have been that serious either. There's no doubt about it...he woke up the next morning and went to see Professor Suzukawa during noon—for an interview appointment in the name of assisting his studies.

During the interview was when Suzukawa introduced himself as a genomics lover. His studies were related to DNA of famous/successful people, which is why he invited many well-accomplished individuals for collection of DNA samples and interviews.

Although neither of them two really knew much about this professor, but after all the invitation did come from a professor of their university so they weren't suspicious of anything. It just so happens both of them were free that day.

That day, that day he, or they both went to see Professor Suzukawa. The first thing that they both did after arriving was just have a casual conversation; the majority of what they discussed was the parenting methods by which they were subject to during childhood and the years leading up to adulthood. As the conversation went on, they both uncontrollably fell asleep.

Kudo could still remember the feeling of his body being dragged to somewhere when his mind was blurred out, except he had no power to fight nor struggle not even one little bit. Slowly, his consciousness faded out more and more, until it completely shut off.

With no idea of how much time has passed, Kudo woke up one day muddle-headed and found himself tied up. Although it was unlike when he was taken here passed out, at that moment he could actually use his strength, yet he still couldn't free himself. If he guesses correctly, that place must've been a laboratory, and there was another person who was also tied up on the other side of the machine.

Just having seen that professor standing before their eyes, as if doing things with some sort of equipment, Kudo fell unconscious again.

Kuroba still kind of recalls there being an electrical current which flowed through him and another person's body. It felt as if that current would go on for an eternity. Yet they recalled none of this before today.

Although it's hard to accept the fact, but they indeed are no longer the individuals they used to be. It was that maniac professor's experiment that combined them into one.

They were one during the night of arresting the fake Kid. They were one when Ran Mouri brought the bento boxes to Kudo. They were one during the nights that Kaito Kuroba showed up at some gatherings. They were also one during the night that Shinichi Kudo returned home and fell asleep quickly whereas Kuroba could not sleep well.

Should've known this way earlier, but only when now it cannot be avoided does all memory come back.

It's just that he can't do it...he accepts himself not, the self whom is like a monster right now. So that's why he attacked, why he attempted to destroy the mirror of truth before his very eyes even though it was useless.

He knows...he knows that even if he destroys the mirror, he cannot destroy himself and he cannot destroy the reality which has already happened.

Even so he will not give up, he will not stop destroying. Except what he really should destroy and crush is this psychological barrier of his and the goal that Shinsanrou Suzukawa wants to achieve by using this sort of technology.

He mustn't let people like this live freely beyond the reach of the law and continue to perform such evil deeds on more people. First, he must ask permission to obtain assistance from the *Advanced Technology Crimes Task Force* and the Public Security Bureau—

The body suddenly stops moving. "You..." Kudo thinks.

"You mustn't inform the police about this." As Kuroba tells him this, a few images of a man clothed in white appears in the mind, but not for long.

Through this one brain of the body they're using right now, not only can they directly communicate through thoughts but they can also directly know of each other's memories.

But since they share one brain, if the other person doesn't want that to happen then he can immediately end it. This, is what they just experienced.

They then decide to first return to Kudo's position, finish whatever job there is on his hands, and then ask his boss to take two days off for personal matters.

Originally his boss was a little suspicious that such a hard-worker like Kudo would take two days off, but when he saw the look in Kudo's eyes he decided to not ask for the details.

If Kudo decides to not report the specific reason to him, then Kudo must have his own reason for doing so. Anyway, these days it has been relatively peaceful, nothing really serious has occurred in recent days, so even if anything happens they should still be fine without him. Besides, after all these years, Kudo himself knows that if they are in desperate need of him to return, then he must report back no matter what.

The first thing he does after leaving the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is head for Block 22, District 2, Beika Town. Except when he gets there and pushes down the doorbell, he waits for a long time and still no one comes out to welcome him, and so he heads for next-doors.

Only when he looks at the door plate does he realize where this is. When he enters, it's as if he sees a library.

This seems to be cleaner and tidier than expected for a place that hasn't been occupied for a long time, as if someone has always been taking good care of it.

After a day's work, he's so tired that he goes for the bed right away, and before falling asleep he thinks that maybe Agasa-hakase and Haibara will come back tomorrow.

When he thinks so, the images that appear are of a plump old man and a short-haired woman. Kuroba wanted to use the chance to get some data from Kudo's memories of them, except what's different from yesterday night is that this time Kudo's sleepiness happens to bring Kuroba into dreamland as well.

* * *

*The Advanced Technology Crimes Task Force does not actually exist, in Japanese original text as part of the Community Safety Bureau in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department there is a せいばー犯罪対策課 which I believe actually translates to the Cybercrime Task Force. But as I have mentioned, I originally wrote this in Chinese and therefore primarily used Chinese sources when I wrote this. The Chinese translation was 高科技犯罪对策总合中心, which essentially translates to the Advanced Technology Crimes Task Force Center, which I obviously did not relate to as a subdivision for solely cybercrimes. So pardon me for making up the name of a task force to make the story make sense, after all the Cybercrime Task Force doesn't seem too suitable for a case like Shinichi and Kaito's.


	4. Chapter 3

Black, this time all he could see after opening his eyes is just one black blob after another. When he waves his hand, he discovers that these blobs which can flow actually aren't completely black but are somewhat transparent. Also, they're not completely fluid nor are they completely solid.

Consciousness suddenly travels through these black blobs and connects with the person on the other side. The black blobs become more and more transparent, until the naked eye sees that they became gray blobs.

He moves his hand inwards until it's in front of his face. When he takes a closer look, there appears to be no hue of human skin; no, to be more exact, there's no hue at all. He appears to be in a black and white world, without any other colors decorating it. Neither are there any other people's existence; it's just himself, him who somehow got trapped here.

All of a sudden, his hand uncontrollably stretches out with him having no idea of where his body would be taken.

His fingertips start to overlap and connect with the other person's, until their bodies fuse together. His vision darkens more and more—

He arrives at that deep sea again. This time when he waves his hand, he can see a black silhouette.

It's just like when he first dreamt of this place, the only difference is that there's no difficulty breathing nor is there pain with the ears. There's also some green dots of light floating around like fireflies.

These dots of light distributed in the sea gradually increase—until many thin currents of green light start to randomly appear and randomly connect those dots of light every second.

Suddenly there's a current coming towards him, yet he has no way of dodging it. That current merely scratches the side of his face and leaves a slight pain.

A few seconds later, those light currents all pass through him in an instant. They mercilessly stab every part of his body every moment, as if—

He wakes up with his whole body sweating, yet he feels the chills from head to toe. The same images keep reappearing in his mind, torturing him as he's constantly reminded of the lab.

"I see you've finally woken up, Mr. Detective," she says sarcastically with a calm tone.

Having no idea when she came in, he rubs his eyes and proceeds to see that there's a plump old man standing behind her.

"The door wasn't closed. Hakase and I were wondering what could've happened."

"Ah-haha, is that so..."

After hearing that, Ai Haibara kind of frowns a little. "So, what it is this time?" Then she crosses her arms as a sign that she has no intention of chit-chatting.

First of all, there hasn't been anyone living in the Kudo Residence for quite some time now. Second of all, Kudo's parents have not returned. Third of all, Mrs. Kudo did not come here with him. Fourth of all, the way that Mr. Detective speaks is just downright unusual and ingenuine, so there must be something that he wants to discuss and work out with them.

But Haibara doesn't get it. As an Inspector, Kudo-kun has plenty of resources and people to use. Not to mention, normally he's so busy that he rarely ever gets this type of spare time. What could it be? What's so important to the point that Kudo finds it worthy for him to spend his valuable time to wait until now when they just came back?

"Well, you see, the thing is that..."

After having listened to what seems like Mr. Detective's nonsense talk, Hakase is just straight up dumbfounded to the point where he doesn't know what to say. As for Haibara next to him, she just calmly states: "Huh? I'm pretty sure today isn t April Fools'."

"Haibara-san, Agasa-hakase, though I don't wanna admit it either, but everything that Kudo just said is true."

This person standing before their very eyes has the face of Kudo, and it's Kudo's voice that they hear when he opens his mouth to speak. Except, there's a slight variation in the way that he speaks that's unfamiliar and makes them feel as if it's a stranger.

Hakase still chooses to keep quiet, until when Haibara pulls him to the side does he whisper: "Well, there have been more than just one or two unimaginable things that have happened to Shinichi."

After hearing what Hakase said, Haibara got over her suspicion. After all, how she came about to get to know Kudo did have to do with that insane experiment of the Black Organization. If it wasn't for Akemi-neesan's sacrifice, if it wasn't for Kudo and many other forces, to what degree would their experiment have gotten to? She dares not to imagine.

Besides, he's so busy that he wouldn't have the time to joke around with them anyway. Not to mention, no matter how full of imagination he is, it wouldn't be to this degree.

So Haibara takes a trip to next-doors and comes back with a box while also wearing a pair of latex gloves. She sits down, puts a small pillow on the table, and then puts something on a Q-tip cotton swab.  
"Sit down, then reach your hand out like this." Her palm faces up, and she lays her arm on top of the small pillow.

"Wait a second." He followed Haibara s instructions, but when she starts rubbing his arm with the Q-tip, that worried voice slips out just like that. "Nothing to worry about, it's just collecting some blood as a DNA sample," he says in the other much calmer voice.

Haibara doesn't say anything. She just returns the equipment back to the box, puts a bandage on him, applies some medicine to his hands, and then wraps them with some gauze wrap.

The occurrences before their very eyes leave them no choice but to accept reality, which is that there are two people and not just one individual, not just Shinichi Kudo, living inside his body now. Although they have no idea what kind of background the other person came from, but his family must be worried sick about him now.

"Kuroba-san, your family..." Seeing his friend whom he had known for year like this, all of a sudden Hakase just didn't know what to say.

"I'll contact them later, the most important thing now is to find that professor."

If it's allowed, Kaito would rather not tell Aoko anything. He's often not home anyway. Aoko's very used to that. If he gets in contact with Aoko, that means that he has to come up with another reason to lie to her, otherwise if he doesn't tell her something that sounds like the real deal then there's no way she wouldn't worry. All Kaito wants now is to get back to his original body and go home, even if it means Aoko's gonna beat the crap outta him. He really...really doesn't wanna lie to her anymore.

Although Shinichi doesn't really agree with Kaito's train of thought, but he understands this sort of feeling, so he doesn't even try to persuade him.

"I'm afraid that unfortunately, this case isn't as simple as finding where Shinsanrou Suzukawa is. This man knows exactly what he's doing, so his disappearance must have been meticulously calculated."

However, he still has to give a little reminder; facing off against such a malicious experiment of the degree of human merging must be a long hard battle, no matter if they consider it from a personal perspective or not.

"By the way, have you guys thought of it?"

"Thought of what?"

"You guys are now essentially equivalent to a relatively successful experimental body, so will that professor really just let you guys off the hook so easily?"

Haibara has no interest for solving cases and mysteries and detective stuff, but the way that professor chose to handle this seems beyond unusual, so she had to say something.

"Yeah, I've thought about it, but I don't have an answer as to what his objective is."

Haibara understands that they want to first find Suzukawa and then figure out these details, but somehow she has a bad feeling.

The Kudo now is still the Kudo from before, but he is more than just himself. In the same way, that Suzukawa is a Professor of Cell and Molecular Bioscience, yet he's way more than a regular professor.

"If we contact the Public Safety Bureau..." he says while he holds his chin with his hand and thinks. "We cannot." With that being said, the whole atmosphere chills down. "I mean, they would think that we're crazy," he adds on after realizing that there's two more people involved with the discussion.

"..." All of a sudden, Kudo didn t know what to say. "It was only an idea."

It's definitely beneficial to use the power of the police, but those authorities above him would indeed suspect something going on and thus demand a reason. With Kudo's credibility, it wouldn't really be that big of a deal if he doesn't explain the details. Besides, he already made a copy of information related to Suzukawa, and it's not like the police would leave a missing person case unattended; although, they might not care for the case as much as others. Those normal investigation procedures would still go on.

After all, now they're one person, so Kudo has to respect Kuroba's opinion and find another way to further investigate.

"If we go to the FBI or CIA..."

"They might be able to pull out files on cases and events relating to genomics studies, but after all they are American agencies. The information that a few members can provide wouldn't help much anyway." This time, it's Haibara who turns down Hakase's suggestion.

If he can't contact the police and tell them the specifics, and his old friends from FBI and CIA may not provide much help, then what should he do?

The more that Kudo thinks of how to successfully investigate Suzukawa under this sort of situation, the more his brain hurts. He can't let Kuroba know too much, but he also can't just do nothing and let everything stay this way.

"Don't forget that we're one, I know everything that you're thinking about," Kuroba thinks.

"...Gotcha."

Kaito Kuroba suddenly recalls that he can pick out any memory as he likes from the memory bank of this body, and so he got the memory relating to an organization which takes the middle grounds and has no official name.

"*Tahou*...?" Kudo sighs. Of course, under this type of condition there's nothing he can hide from Kuroba. "In the end, guess they're our only choice."

"It's the solution when you don't have a solution, but I have to warn you," with that being said, Haibara pauses for a second, "don't trust them too much." Haibara leaves one last sentence for Kudo and Kuroba when she took the equipment and sample back along with Hakase.

After the door closes, in this large Kudo Residence there is nothing else but shelves of books, traditional western styled furniture, the golden sunlight which shines through the windows, and him. It seems, as a matter of fact, rather lonely.

He is the owner of this residence, but he is also a stranger who came here for the first time and has stayed here for not even twenty-four hours yet. But as a stranger, he very naturally walks towards that telephone that still works which he didn't even know existed and actually still works, and phones a most familiar yet unfamiliar phone number.

On the other end of the phone call, there's no one to answer. The sound of "beep" erases everything that he was thinking of saying. Shinichi sees Kaito like this and has a slight urge to help him say it, but then he thinks and reaches the conclusion that a message by Kaito himself is the best choice.

"Hey, Aoko..." Kaito says after thinking for some time, "it's me. I may not be able to go home for a few days. I'll have you and them look after the store for me. You..." As if a fishbone is stuck in his throat, he suddenly doesn't know how to use words to convey his feelings at this moment. "Remember to take good care of yourself."

It was a very typical message, yet it was as painful as the moment before swallowing down the last breath, as if they would never see each other again.

"Not gonna try calling her cell phone?" After Shinichi says this, a number appears in their mind yet instantly disappears. "Nope. Also, I want to make an agreement with you."

Their bodies had already been merged together into one at that time, yet even if their thoughts start to synchronize, there has always been always two free individual consciousnesses. Therefore, if they can avoid reading each other's private memories then they will, for it's the most basic respect.

They have no other choice but to believe in each other and cooperate.

With every hit of the fingertips do the keys of the keyboard and the mouse make a sound. He just now realizes that what's on the screen before his very eyes is a totally different email system than what he's used to. He sees his fingers very accustomed to typing out a series of numbers which appear to be a password that he's not familiar with at all. After a few seconds to load, there's only one person in the contacts list by the name of "T20-F". He thinks for a while, around twenty seconds, to formulate his wording. When he's done, he looks at the timer in the top right which reads only thirty-nine seconds, and quickly types out a few lines.

Very important, I have an offer that you must accept.

I would like to talk to you in person. You decide the place, time, and amount.

Please schedule the meeting during these two or three days. The quicker the better.

—P4869

That flashing light on the computer screen, somehow feels familiar to him.

Within two minutes, he receives a reply: Tokyo Tsukiya Psychological Consultation Clinic, you're welcome to come whenever.

It has only been a short twenty seconds after clicking to see the reply, the screen has already returned to the default homepage like when he opened the web browser in the beginning.

The way they function is still the same, so annoying and frustrating.

* * *

*Tahou means other side, which refers to the fact that this organization doesn't really take a side. Also, as said in this chapter, one can say that they take the middle grounds.


	5. Chapter 4

He gets ready in the same way that he always had. The only difference from before is that he just calmly looks at himself in front of the mirror this time, with no denial and with no screaming.

After driving on many perfect roads and many curvy roads, he finally arrives at the psychological consultation clinic. Unlike what he had imagined, this area isn't all that much of a busy market street or anything, in fact it's just a regular residential area.

And this psychological consultation clinic appears to be no different from the other buildings here; it's just a plain and simple building with no eye-catching sign or any elaborate and fine decoration.

He knocks on the door and a short-haired woman comes out making some hand gestures which seem to be sign language, so he responds in the same way. She smiles and then welcomes him in.

Except there seems to be no one else's existence when he walks in. She tells him to wait a moment, and then walks into another room. In exchange with her, a skinny and somewhat delicate-looking man dressed in all black walks out. Yet Kudo has a deep understanding inside, of the fact that this man is a scary figure who has experienced the cruelest training. This man walks unhesitantly to the black office chair across from him and sits down in it. The whole time that look in the man's eyes gives him a somewhat unpleasant feeling.

The black-clothed man rests his elbow on the desk, folds his hands with his fingers loosely interlocked, and then lays his chin on top of his folded hands while continuing to stare at him with great interest.

That look in those eyes somehow seem to pass through him like sharp daggers. Also, the weird thing is that they're facing each other, yet he feels a chill from behind. He thinks more in detail and finally figures out that it's just the air conditioning.

"That girl,"

"Mai, she's a mute who works here. On top of that, she was born with terrible hearing."

Although it's a very normal sentence which probably should have made him feel sort of sad, instead he's more focused on avoiding those eyes. His eyes then finally settles on a tank with just plants and no fish or any other animals.

"So, let us get right to the subject,"

Hearing that, he turns his head back to see that same man who made him felt constrained smiling. This makes him feel as if either it was a psychological thing by which he had fear of the unknown, or it was just the environment which gave him a wrong impression.

"Inspector Kudo and I happen to be old friends. Since I'm taking this offer personally, money will not be part of our discussion."

This should be a message that makes him somewhat happier, except Kudo doesn't seem to be affected at all.

"Futoumiya-san, there's something that I want to clarify. This time, I'm not the only client."

Futoumiya tilts his head slightly while still staring at him with much interest, and unhesitantly says: "Well then, when will the other client arrive?"

"Actually, he..." Kudo starts it off and lifts his head up. "Already here," Kuroba finishes it off.

The change in the tone of the person in front of Futoumiya's eyes has his smile slightly fade a little, but what takes the place of the fading smile still ends up being a smile. In fact, this time the angle of that arc of the smile seems to have widened though he still maintains a pose of laying his chin on his folded hands.

"Oh—" Unlike what they had in mind, he doesn't seem to be all that surprised. In fact, the pitch of his voice seems to have risen a little. "My bad, please pardon me."

"Kaito Kuroba, a jewelry appraiser." He takes a business card out of his pocket and hands it to Futoumiya.

Futoumiya takes the card with his left hand while still his right hand still supports his chin. He takes a glance of the card and puts it in his pocket. Then he brings his left hand back to continues to have his hands loosely folded. Futoumiya stares at Kuroba's face while saying: "And also a fabulous magician."

Kuroba doesn't answer. He manages to maintain a poker face.

"As you can see, thanks to Professor Suzukawa, this is what we've ended up becoming," says Kudo in an attempt to bring back the main point, "and now the only things that we can recall from that day are just random blurry short moments."

"Oh? Are you referring to Shinsanrou Suzukawa from the University of Tokyo?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, that professor..." As Futoumiya says so, he finally sits up straight in a normal position with his hands placed on the table. "He most definitely is into studying and analyzing DNA...genomics, that kind of stuff."

"Please help me find him, and if possible we want to recover our original bodies as soon as possible."

"Of course," Futoumiya says and then stands up to clap his hands together two times.

They hear a sound coming from the room that Futoumiya came out of. With a push of the door, a fair-looking lady wearing a white lab coat and glasses comes walking out; she has long hair with a light brown hue. She sits down in the chair that Futoumiya sat in, and Futoumiya takes a seat in another chair on the side.

"This is my friend, also the owner of the clinic, Tsukiya."

"What a pleasure to meet the legendary *Heisei* Holmes," she says so as she reaches her hand out.

"No no," Kudo responds very calmly when shaking hands with her, "I'm just an unfortunate client." He manages to let out a smile, and then like what's he used to saying, he says: "No need to be so polite."

"Please contact me when you are in need of my assistance." Tsukiya hands a business card to Kudo, strokes her light brown hair for a few seconds, and then hands him a clipboard and a pen.

"If I'm not mistaken, the other client, Kuroba-san right?...please sign here."

"Thank you," says Kuroba while he takes the clipboard with his right hand, and the pen with his left hand.

"Would Kudo-san please sign here." She points to the box next to Kuroba's signature.

Kudo moves the clipboard to his right and starts writing with his right hand. When he's finished, he hands it to Tsukiya who turns the page and writes a couple of strokes with the pen. It ultimately ends up in the hands of Futoumiya.

"This is a three-party contract which agrees to keep this matter between no one but us. Kudo-san and Kuroba-san are one party. Tsukiya and I each belong to two separate parties. My party is responsible for keeping the contract." As Futoumiya says so, he takes out a folder. "I believe that Kudo-san clearly remembers the specific terms and conditions of the contract."

"Wait," Kuroba stops Futoumiya just in time, "may I take a look?"

This request enhances Futoumiya's smile. "Of course, my fault for taking assumptions."

Afterwards, Mai opens the door and tells them that everything is set up and ready. She leads everyone in, and that's when they realize that this isn't a room but instead it's an entrance to a stairway.

When everyone passes through the door, Mai turns the lock on the door.

With every single step that they take, they're deeper into the undergrounds. That is, until they cannot see anything in the dark underground passageway, and until only sounds of them walking resound and travel into their ears. And now with every stepping sound that they make do the lights, no...do the torches light up and warm the place a little.

Kudo Kuroba felt no fear as they told their experience and what remains of their vague memories, except they still have to constantly keep an eye out and be cautious of what happens next. After all, the fact that a psychological consultant clinic has an underground passage built to it is by itself a weird enough thing. That is to say, the fact that Futoumiya invited them here and accepted the deal under his private name and got a psychological consultant involved in the first place is no less of a strange case.

They walk some more until they finally seem to have almost reached the end, yet there's no exit. He didn't really expect this, but Mai, Tsukiya, and Futoumiya stops at a distance about three meters away from the dead end. When he sees this, he also stops. Suddenly, all flames go out, and the platform underneath starts lowering and bringing him, in the dark, to that unknown place.

A bright white light flashes. He looks up, with no idea of how far underground they've gotten. And now before their eyes is a path which he has no idea where it'll lead them to. He observes that the material of the tiles beneath them and the walls isn't stone, but is instead steel.

A chill accompanies them as they arrive before the doors. Tsukiya enters a long chain of passwords, the system verifies the fingerprints of her left hand and then her right hand, and finally the system verifies the iris of her left eye and then her right eye.

It's a completely different world behind the two doors. All that they see are machines and equipments which seem very high-tech, and very much unlike what a normal psychological consultant clinic would have. But it's likely that Tsukiya's a member of Tahou, so Kudo's not surprised at all.

Mai turns on a piece of equipment in her hand, takes a few swipes on the screen, passes it to him and tells him to put all five fingers of his left hand on it.

Although he's suspicious of it, he listens and does as told. The screen under his fingers light up with aquamarine light currents. A few seconds later, the words "data log in complete" show up. Then Mai has him repeat the process with his right hand, and despite Kuroba's reluctance and their suspicion, Kudo still chooses to follow instructions.

"This is the remote control of The Dream Exploring Machine, and everything here." As Tsukiya says so, she swipes a few times on the screen. "My precious inventions are very sensitive. Even if it's just a hair of a stranger that lands on them, they'll take that as there's an intruder; not to mention, what could possibly happen when a stranger's full body comes into contact with them." Her hand gently goes over the very top part of the Dream Explorer which seems to be a helmet. So when there's a new friend, there's the need of collecting some data. I hope you don't mind.

He doesn't say anything until Futoumiya, who was just wandering around, comes walking towards them. "Your friend, I don't think she's a regular psychological consultant. Is she?"

Somehow, Futoumiya's smile makes him feel slighty irritated. "She was one of our brilliant research scientists. After she had worked for us for more than a decade, she switched to being a psychological consultant.""

I'm flattered. In reality, I'm just a science lover."

"Well then, I'm interested in knowing," Kuroba lets out a sort of mischievous smile, "how come Tsukiya-san became interested in psychology?"

"Well..." She lays her chin on the back of her right hand, and continues speaking: "A lot of times, from a psychological standpoint and the subconsciousness, there's a lot of answers which we can get which may not necessary be possible with other fields."

After Mai has him situated on the seat of The Dream Exploring Machine, Tsukiya tells her to have Futoumiya step out for now.

"No need to worry, all this machine does is use a tiny amount of electrical current to relax your body's muscles, which will then bring you into dreamland; it'll explore and record your dream. I already had Mai set it to match your condition. After you fall asleep, The Dream Exploring Machine will use a small amount of electrical current to stimulate your cerebral cortex, and hopefully achieve the result of helping you to regain your recent forgotten memories."

The top part of the seat gradually lowers in elevation, until his body lays flat on it as if laying on bed in a pose to sleep. Sleepiness eventually gets him. His vision blurs up. For a short moment they have the thought that privacy of thoughts really couldn't exist within this period of time. Not long after, there's aquamarine light currents circling him. They pass through his body, which he cannot freely move, nonstop in an instant; that's a true human body and not just a black shadow.

As if he's brought back to the dream that he had before he woke up in the morning, this time the ocean doesn't bring breathing difficulty nor any sharp pain. Except, the fact that it's summer and he still felt cold the whole day through didn't change a bit in his dream. This slight feeling of the cold continuously torments and suppresses him like a killer addicted to a game in which people get hunted down, never sparing him any chance to rest and breath.

This sort of chasing makes him feel as if he's someone who should have given up in the beginning and should have taken onto an early fated death date.

In the cold ocean, he feels that his eyelid are becoming heavier and heavier, until they completely close.

With no idea if it's because he's very used to these occurrences in his dream, or is it because there's no pain which accompanies, him now seems to be able to face this sort of unstoppable end and his lack of power to change it.

Death, it's really as cold as imagined.

* * *

Well, now it's no longer The Heisei Holmes since the Heisei era already ended and got replaced by the Reiwa era; By the way, I heard that Aoyama does plan on just simply changing that detail.

However, I won't change that until I finally finish the epilogue(I should be able to finish with one last part), which will enable me to actually look over everything and actually revise someday in the future(which I may actually end up doing years later).


	6. Chapter 5

Except the fact that he can still feel this cold pursuit means that there's still a distance between him and death.

Shinichi Kudo slowly opens his eyes, only to discover that his arms and legs are completely locked down by rope and duct tape and just like what he experienced many times before in his dreams he cannot move. To be more exact, he can use some power but it always ends up as a waste of energy. Through the glass before his eyes, he sees a person wearing a large lab coat, protection mask, and a pair of gloves.

Kudo can't see that guy's face and he isn't clear of what that guy is doing, but he's sure that he knows who this person is and he's sure that he's in a laboratory now.

All of a sudden, Kudo feels that a strong electrical current travels through his whole body and he can't help but let out a scream. At that moment, there's just no excess time at all to think of what kind of experiment and what exactly does this maniac want to do with human bodies.

The only way he can see is by looking through the glass window installed before his eyes on this door, which doesn't give him a very wide range to see, yet the sound of his scream made its way throughout the whole lab accompanied by another person's scream.

Kaito Kuroba has no idea at all as to the reason why he got kidnapped to this place. Being constantly tortured by electrical currents, he feels as if he's dying when he's actually living in this moment.

That electrical current seems to be released endlessly. It could just result in their short sweet death, yet it tortures them infinitely.

Not getting to live, nor getting to die...this must be it.

The only thing they could do is just look through the window to see that devilish person handling the equipment in his hands, facing his back to him when he sits down to read over the blueprints in detail, and feel with their own bodies what's the next step with the change of the current flow over and over again with no way of fighting back.

Feeling and understanding the meaning of rather die than live, and rethinking why he didn't keep an eye out at the time of the interview...over and over again.

Understanding his weakness and incapability over and over again...

The professor stands up, walks towards them, and removes his protection mask. Kuroba and Kudo now can barely see as they're tired out and their vision blurs. With no idea of what he just did, the intensity of the electrical current seems to have increased. It's just so painful to the point that they don't even have the energy to scream anymore. Gradually, their consciousness becomes more blurry, the pain decreases, and their vision starts to overlap.

The professor quickly types away on the keyboard. One chain after another of mysterious combos of numbers, letters, and signs appear on the big screen. If he guesses correctly, those should be codes used to assign tasks to the machines.

After some long time of merging together, they finally become one body. Before them now is a door completely made from glass, yet this vast space for them to see doesn't bring him a view all that appealing.

All there is in this plain lab is just a bunch of experimental materials and electronic appliances; the atmosphere seems rather unlively. After the experiment is finished, the professor closes the computer connected to the human-fusing machine. And he who no longer gets electrical currents passing through him, he who is completely robbed of energy, and whose whole body happens to be numb falls asleep along with the shutdown of the computer.

A light electrical current circles around his fingertips. He awakes with a full head of sweat while breathing heavily and hurriedly to find himself in a seated position on The Dream Exploring Machine.

"You're awake."

It isn't long after he started breathing at a more normal pace when Tsukiya comes walking out of another room, and this is when he realizes there wasn't anyone else in the laboratory just then. Also, although it was a short period of time but when the doors parted he clearly saw there was a big screen on the wall of that room, so that must be the surveillance room.

"How do you feel?"

He doesn't respond. All he does is just take a look at the helmet of The Dream Exploring Machine that's already shut down but still not yet removed from his head. Seeing this, Tsukiya smiles a little and pushes down a button, then all parts of the machine return to their original location except for the seat.

"Thanks to you, the same torturing process that we went through is now clearly imprinted into our memory." With that being said, Kuroba gets up ready to leave.

"I feel really sorry for you two, but it had to be done in order to find Professor Suzukawa faster." She smiles again and catches up with him. "As long as I get notified beforehand, you're welcome to come again anytime you wish."

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about this," says Kudo after they stepped on that tile and start to go back up, "there's two more scientists who'll join our party. I hope you won't mind."

"Why no, not at all. May you be so kind as to tell me their names?"

He purses the corner of his lips and then smiles to tell her: "We'll come tomorrow at the same time, that'll be when they get revealed."

Red firelight lights up the cold first underground floor, the long tunnel that they first took. The only sounds that echo throughout are the two different sounds made by a pair of leather shoes and a pair of high heels as they walk.

May it be that the path is too long, as he walks back he starts feeling a little bored, so he starts focusing on those torches on the walls. Within the fiery red lies sleeping creatures that move a little every second, changing constantly so that no man can possibly predict.

Or shall they be beasts ready and waiting for the prey to make that wrong move?

They were already foolish enough to fall right into that trap and become the prey on someone else's plate, now the role-play's gotta change and this time they're the ones plotting the game plan.

They return to that normal conference room which they first came to. Futoumiya happens to be turning some pages and looking over batches of some info that no one in the world knows where he could've gotten them from. Mai sees that they returned and pours two cups of coffee for him and Tsukiya. After taking the coffee, Tsukiya hands a batch of papers over to Mai and tells her to put them somewhere, and he thanks her. Under this serious speechless atmosphere, he feels a little cold so he attempts to warm him hands by placing them on the coffee mug while staring at the hardworking Futoumiya.

"Futoumiya-san, I have a suggestion about Suzukawa's search and investigation."

"Please, go ahead." With that, he places the info down on the table, and stares at Kudo's eyes like before.

"I don't know that he himself has any thought of establishing his hideout there, but I think that we should try to find Suzukawa's laboratory as soon as possible."

"You make a good point, that's exactly what we're planning on doing." Futoumiya pluckers the corner of his lips and then says: "Well then, would you happen to have any extra info to give?"

He tries recalling, but all that appears in his mind are just a few short moments here and there. After a few seconds of silence, he finally replies: "Sorry, all that I remember is somehow falling unconscious during the interview, and then I was dragged somewhere."

"When consciousness was regained, it was just like what happened in the dream that Tsukiya-san observed, we were fused into one body through the use of electrical currents."

"Is that so?" Futoumiya didn't say anything more.

"Sorry to trouble you," he says when they're about to leave.

"It's fine, really. Oh and also, please let me come with you guys."

He doesn 't know how to respond all of a sudden. "Ummm...about that, we drove here ourselves so..."

So he decides to just speak his confusion out loud to remind Futoumiya of the fact.

"Assuring the client's safety is also part of the contract." It makes much better sense with that being said. "At least, please let me follow behind you guys."

"Sure," says Kudo who's used to all of this, and with that he gets into his car and makes his way back by starting out driving on the curvy road.

Just like Futoumiya suggested, he does follow behind them quite closely in fact.

"Hey Kudo," Kuroba thinks to Kudo as he takes a look at that black car behind them from the rearview mirror, "who in the world is that guy?"

It may be because they slept for too long, or it may be because there's quite a distance before they get back, the speed that the summer weather enters into the night at this time is definitely quicker than he expected. Along with this dark black color of the night, there's the camouflage of that car of Futoumiya's, especially on a street where there's no street light.

When there's only that light on the front of the car that's left, that car's close to a perfect camouflage in the dark night, which sorts of bothers Kudo. Although many years has passed since then, when he sees that black car it still reminds him of Gin's Porsche 356A.

"I'll tell you in detail when we get back," and that's all Kudo decides to respond with for the time being.

If may be because the time has really gotten pretty late by now, without air conditioning being turned on, the summer night along with a slight breeze still lets him feel a little cold.

Despite the fact that when he takes a look, it reads twenty-four degrees Celsius on the screen, which is a pretty comfortable temperature.

Or who knows, it might be because there's two people in this body so it's twice as sensitive compared to when they were just individuals.

He sees that the light is on and so he heads towards the Kudo Residence. Futoumiya rolls down his car window and tells him: "Please say hello to them for me," then he approaches the darkness of the night and disappears from sight.

When he enters, he sees that Hakase seems to be playing around with some new invention while Haibara is typing on a laptop as she's drinking coffee,

"You guys have finally returned," says Haibara coldly after she yawns.

He takes a look from left to right and from top to bottom, without knowing what to say.

"Ran requested it. After all there has been some dust that has accumulated over the days so the house needs to be cleaned." As Hakase says so, he continues to play around with the thing.

"You guys have been waiting for quite a while, haven't you?"

"And where did you go?" Her words are short but sharp.

He doesn't say anything, all he does is take out the business card in his pocket.

She takes a glance at it and reads: "Saiesu Tsukiya."

"What is it?"

"Nothing," she says and then takes a sip of coffee, "I just thought that the name's a little familiar." Then she lifts her head to look at him and continues to say: "A member of Tahou, I see."

"Yep. Oh and also, Futoumiya told me to say hi for him."

Upon hearing this name, Haibara turns back to the screen of her laptop. On the screen there's too many combinations of numbers and words that normal people don't understand, which happens to also be the DNA report of him now.

"By looking at the blood sample of you guys now and Kudo's individual sample, it seems like a plausible possibility that you guys may truly be one person right now." She then looks towards him again, "so, what did you go to a psychological consultation clinic for?"

"It was the meeting location that Futoumiya sent me, by the way..."

"..." As if she listened to another series of Mr. Detective's nonsense talk, Haibara thinks for a moment and figures that since that's a Tahou member, then that means that it's definitely possible for something like The Dream Exploring Machine to be invented. And so she decides to just swallow down what she wanted to say.

"Also, Haibara and Hakase, please come with us tomorrow during noon to the psychological consultation clinic."

"...Gotcha," says Haibara as she takes a look at the time and gets ready to go home with Hakase, but as she's about to leave she stops at the door.

Seeing this, Kudo decides to say something but then gets cut off by Haibara. "You guys be careful, also," she says and then looks towards the telephone, "don't forget to listen to her message."

Kaito Kuroba presses down the button to play the message despite the fact that he feels a little nervous, yet unlike the series of threats and insults and temper tantrums that he thought he was gonna get, the message actually started off with a few seconds of silence. "...Baka you better remember to come home early." After that there was no complaining like he was used to hearing, and there was no questioning either. It was just a simple sentence that sounded so powerless.

May it be something he imagined hearing or not, no matter how many times he listens to the message, it always seems as if there was a nasal sound to her voice when she spoke.

This whole day was just tiring altogether, and now somehow he feels even more down.

He leans his back towards the desk and sits on the ground with no intention of talking or getting up at the moment. All he does is just sit there, and do nothing.

"By the way Kudo," Kuroba finally sends out a signal that he wants to communicate, "that guy..."

Kudo doesn't respond, he just picks out the memory related to that person from his memory banks.

Ou Futoumiya, thirty years old, got promoted to the highest ranking position in Tahou ten years ago and became one of T20(Top 20), which is a group of twenty people that serve as the head of Tahou.

At the time, this man and another guy made history as the youngest members to ever get into T20 of Tahou.


	7. Chapter 6

Tahou is a mysterious neutral organization whose size is unknown, origin is unknown, founding purpose unknown, and even its official name is unknown. This sort of organization doesn't have a so-called headquarters but instead only several subdivisions scattered in all sorts of places. Most of the time, their members don't even tell their family and friends about the existence of Tahou. What's known for sure is that they're an organization that values profit the most. Generally speaking, they're involved with all sorts of deals and they accept all sorts of offers given the fact that it won't ruin the balance between good and evil so much so to the point that it causes global turmoil.

This sort of mysterious underground organization gathered all sorts of information and exceptionally skillful people in all different fields over the years. Within the organization itself, they also developed many scientific experiments.

Futoumiya happens to be a well-known and widely respected family within Tahou. Every generation has followed their ancestors' instructions to work for and devote their life to Tahou. In addition, Ou Futoumiya definitely contributed to the destruction of that Black Organization that Kudo faced off when he was young, and so it makes sense that there would be a position in T20 for Futoumiya.

A man who belongs to this sort of organization appears to be their comrade now, but the second after when their deal is fulfilled, who can be sure of whether or not he'll become their enemy because of another deal. Because of this, the only time Kudo signed a contract with them before this occasion was ten years ago when they went against the Black Organization, despite the fact that it was more of a collaboration.

With ten years having passed, the way that they do things still hasn't changed...so unpredictable, so unclear, and so hard to figure out.

After gaining this knowledge, Kuroba now kinda gets the kind of role that Tahou and that guy play.

The only type of person worth trusting on this world is probably someone that knows you well and that you know well, and that's exactly the position that Kuroba and Kudo are in right now; they have to trust each other.

After all, they re one now.

As every second flies by, the clock on the wall repeatedly makes the same sound. Normally no one would have noticed this sound of the second hand, but now it's rather distinct as it travels through the indoors without anyone making any distractions.

People often say that time is the best medicine because it allows for people to gradually forget about any scars or pains, except they don't recognize that the true identity of such a medicine is an anaesthetic.

And their nerves have now been completely anesthetized by time, along with their mindset to be vigilant, and their conscious selves.

In a patch of darkness, he tries opening those shut eyelids, yet it feels as heavy as if they've been weighed down by heavy metal chains used to restrict movement. When he finally opens his eyes, the next second he shuts them again because of some unknown tiredness. In that instant, it's as if he sees that aquamarine light, and also that face that's still covered by a protection mask.

He has no idea of what happened, but as he's half-awake he feels something cold touching his face.

Maybe it's because that temperature feels too real, he suddenly wakes up from the dream to look out the window and see that the sky is already brightening up although that light white crescent moon still hangs high in the sky.

Somehow seeing this sight comforts him quite a bit, and so he lets out a smile and then falls asleep again.

When he wakes up again, he sees two people wearing big white lab coats standing in front of his eyes.

"You've finally awaken." A cold female voice travels into his ear.

"...Haibara, and Hakase?" He says as he rubs his eyes and yawns.

"Seriously? You guys were the ones who said noon in the first place, and by noon you just woke up."

"Noon...!" He just recalls that they're taking a visit to Tsukiya Psychological Consultation Clinic today, and so he hurriedly gets up from the floor and starts rushing to get ready.

Haibara doesn't even know where to start poking fun at him from...the moment she came in, she saw him leaning against the corner of that table. It's just unbelievable that there would be someone who could fall asleep in the same pose that he did, actually sleep all the way until noon, and not wake up even when the sun's already out.

The scorching sunlight scatters upon the same street that was once covered by darkness. And now they start on the way to the consultation clinic.

Maybe it's just Haibara's illusion, but when they drive over those perfect roads there seems to be a suspicious car following them for the whole time. She decides not to say anything about this. He takes a look at the rearview mirror and sees that car, then continues to drive steadily along the path. When they arrive at the seemingly plain house, he stops. Not long after they arrive comes another car that's black, and that man still clothed in black walks towards him; it's Futoumiya.

"Agasa-san, Haibara-san, long time no see."

"Yeah long time no see, Futoumiya-san."

Hakase politely greets him, and Haibara just walks towards the door and knocks on it without even turning her head back.

Futoumiya actually isn't upset about this at all. He brings his hand to his face with the pointer finger to the corner of his mouth and the middle finger to the center of his lips, and he sorts of rests his chin on his palm of his hand a little while looking at her with great interest. Maybe that look happens to be too intense to the degree that Haibara, who faces the door for the entire time, suddenly feels a strong chill which makes her feel abnormally uncomfortable. That type of chill didn't actually sustain for long. When Tsukiya opens the door to greet them, Futoumiya looks away from her.

"Please follow me." This time, the whole process doesn't start with being seated. After simple self-introductions, Tsukiya brings them downstairs through the tunnel and directly to the lab.

All sorts of high-tech machines and equipments enter their vision. Even though he already came once, he still isn't used to this, not to mention Hakase and Haibara.

Of course Haibara has seen way more expansive and well-equipped labs than this, not to mention Kudo Kuroba already described this place to her. Even with that she could not have imagined, that a psychological consultation clinic which seems so plain would have such a lab.

Come to think of it, this place has to have a reason for having two underground floors to it, not to mention being equipped with systems that require fingerprint verification and even iris recognition in order for the doors to open.

In this seemingly high-class laboratory, there's a short-haired woman sitting in the corner with her eyes closed. Since one cannot defy the pull of gravity, her head tilts more and more towards the right and then just droops down. With that happening, she suddenly wakes up and rubs her eyes as she lifts her head up to see them here. She hurriedly gets up and apologizes.

"Excuse her," Tsukiya says as she pats Mai's head and has her hand gently follow the waves of Mai s hair until her fingers touch Mai's face. "This child, she's a little tired." As she says so, she takes a pat on Mai's shoulder and tells her to take a rest upstairs.

Seeing this, Futoumiya originally planned on following Mai back to the first floor; that is, until Haibara calls him out: "Where are you going?"

"As the first party, I have no reason to be viewing the process by which the third party's invention works."

"But," says Haibara as she lets out an uninterpretable ambiguous smile, "as the first party, don't you have the responsibility of protecting the client? Does your work only apply to escorting the client on the way to and from?" She stares at him directly, and those daggers once in his eyes seems to be weakened by this sharp questioning.

He smiles at Tsukiya to see her take a look at Mai and then turn back.

"Haibara-san makes a good point." With that being said, Tsukiya makes a couple of gestures with her hands to tell Mai to bring the info. Afterwards, she gets Kudo Kuroba seated on the chair of The Dream Exploring Machine, starts operating like yesterday, and then leads Hakase and Haibara into the surveillance room.

Times goes by second after second, electrical currents seep in little by little, and consciousness blurs little by little.

Kudo looks at the people behind that door. Although the few glances that they give him evidently show their fear, but them being with him reassures him all the more.

Yet somehow as he feels this sort of reassurance, there's also a sort of disappointment. When his eyes meet with that man's eyes, this sort of complicated feeling instantly turns into anxiety. In the state of anxiety, he closes his eyes and falls into a world of darkness.

In that darkness, suddenly a white light passes in through a seam. Behind that seam, something appears and blocks the middle. When that seam enlarges does he know, that thing happens to be the hand of a human, and that seam is the seam in between two doors.

That light brightens up the lab a little bit, and in a blur he kind of sees how that person looks; just like that of his memories: old, not much hair which happens to also be white, and many wrinkles on the face. Yet compared to these, there's something that's more worth his attention. The next second, his mind's in a blur again. He just feels as if he's being dragged to some place, and then he totally goes unconscious.

When he regains consciousness, he finds himself running behind a person clothed in white who effortlessly jumps on top of the buildings. In the night which has a half moon hanging in the sky, it is unknown why a city full of tall buildings isn't noisy at all like it normally would be. Not to mention, the few small crowds of people also don't seem to move or make any sounds as if they're completely still. Under this sort of condition, he just continuously runs as if there's no end.

It is unknown when the color of everything, except for him and Mr. Thief who he cannot catch, gradually all vanishes until they all blend into the night and can no longer be seen.

Even so, he still runs continuously, as if he can never stop. The only thought in his mind is to catch Kid.

Suddenly, he gets tripped over by something and so reaches a stop as he lies on the ground.

He lifts his head up to see that the half moon isn't like he thought for it's not a perfect half; in fact, there's some imperfection with the right rim. It's just like mankind, no matter how many cuts made to the face, it's impossible to reach perfection such as that in a jewel. The same applies for both the surface and the inside. No matter what, there ll always be craters and flaws—there'll always be imperfections.

He attempts to stand up, yet he discovers that somehow all his limbs are already cuffed.

Even so, he cannot just let a mission target who's so close to him escape so easily.

Kaitou Kid sits on the ground and just observes the man who's working so hard to climb towards him. Kid smiles, puts his right hand behind his back, and pulls out a handgun. A poker card shoots out from the gun. The instant that card is about to hit him, it turns into a bullet. At that moment, Mr. Thief's poker face smile also turns into Professor Suzukawa's face.

As the pain spreads from his forehead, his whole body starts to ache in pain, as if the amount of invisible chains also increase to tie him tighter and tighter.

The pure white moonlight suddenly turns into the light in the lab, and those invisible chains become the aquamarine currents which continuously travels through his body.

"Shinichi!"

"Kudo, hey Kudo!"

He awakes to their calls which sound of panic. His whole body is full of sweat. The image of the face that person makes which he cannot interpret and that stiff movement still sticks in his mind.

In a blur, he breathes heavily and hurriedly like the last time.

Seeing him so weakened and exhausted, Haibara couldn't control herself but to grab him by the collar. "You..." She furiously stares at him. "You still plan on continuing?" She lowers her head and asks him in a soft voice as she finally releases him, not wanting to leave another mark on him on the inside.

"That's..." he says as he manages to get up in a sitting position and pulls out a smile, "of course."

Haibara doesn't say anything, she just leads the way out the lab with a smile on her face. "Bakas, both bakas," she thinks to herself.

Yet, it just so happens to be this type of baka which makes people more willing to see if any miracle capable of combating this disaster will actually occur and save them.

At least in their dictionary, there s no such thing as impossible, that's all that matters.

No matter if it's suffering the worst pain over and over again, struggling in quagmire, or even being tied in who knows what such as in that dream, none of this can stop that heart which will never give up in the face of danger and challenge.

Even if that freedom that comes with success in the end, doesn't come along unless he experiences numerous occasions close to death.


	8. Chapter 7

Humans have a lot of different faces which no other creature can imitate to the same degree. Mankind is also a species that relies solely on their vision, so often times they simply only recognize the beauty on the surface and forget about cleaning that filth on the inside. He's no different from that kind of mediocre and tacky people...obsessed with the world of an artist which he made up himself, and to get carried away with so-called perfection and beauty...that truth as fragile as glass and shatters in an instant.

Even now when he faces a difficult situation, he still cannot stop pursuing perfection. He returns back to there. In the morning at a time that the sun hasn't completely risen, a slight light shines on the glass door and sorts of reflects a familiar face. That long pointer finger sets upon the glass and draws out an outline of this person's face in front of him. He slowly witnesses how he puts on a poker face within short notice.

His fingertips pass by the glass display cases, and as his eyes pass by one precious jewel after another he gets deeply drawn in and cannot take his eyes away from them.

Kaito Kuroba puts on a pair of gloves, takes a piece of cloth and starts wiping a white diamond that he carefully places in his hand. Again and again, he just silently wipes every jewel after another and then places them back to their original spot.

Although these jewels aren't all that valuable in terms of price when compared to certain others, they're still precious to Kaito as he started from scratch and collected them throughout these three years.

Three years, who would've known that within three short years all those big events which he used to experience would become a thing of a past so easily and that his life would just return to normal like this. The only thing that he cannot abandon is that obsession with jewels. So for this he still wears a poker face like in the past, and walks through crowds of people by which the fake and genuine cannot be distinguished from one another. At times he would have a drink after another, but he still maintains a clear mind to enjoy every piece of art; as if through them, he could clearly see artisans' souls.

One could still see a fragment of a moon figure in the sky of the daytime. He grabs a laptop hidden behind the display cases, and repeats the procedures as he did days ago and sends an email to Futoumiya:

I may be occupied later in the day, would it be too early to visit Tsukiya-san at this time?

Futoumiya takes a convenient super light and thin laptop from the inner side of his top attire, and quickly responds with: Whatever pleases you.

Upon first glance after closing his computer, Futoumiya sees a middle-aged and somewhat bearded man dressed in dark-blue with a sakura-shaped badge on his collar coming towards him.

"I see that you've never changed your like for black."

Futoumiya who's dressed in black from top to bottom again today just smiles, and then adjusts his sleeves and collar.

This coffee shop that they're in now has a classical beauty to it, such as the elegant english music of the olden days playing in the background and the neutral colors of the decorations along with some cool tints here and there. This kind of store eases any sort of tension and anxiety that anyone would have quite a bit, and their outfits, especially Futoumiya's, wouldn't seem so unusual.

"Well then, thanks for your help." After a somewhat short conversation, Futoumiya leaves an envelope that has quite some width to it and then leaves.

When he arrives at the psychological consultation clinic, the client's already seated on The Dream Exploring Machine and has entered light sleep.

This time, the client has a special request, and that's to reduce the time that it takes as much as possible so that it doesn't affect his work today.

Unlike Tsukiya, after hearing about this, Futoumiya doesn't smile. He just hopes that the client prepared himself for this.

A jail of wild black grasses, the difficulty breathing in deep seas, those sharp objects which passed through his limbs, that aquamarine light currents, and those invisible chains...one after another do they wrap around and entangle, and torture his body until all that's left before his eyes is just a world where only black and white intercross with each other.

He struggles to try to get up, yet he cannot escape the pull of gravity. He struggles and eventually opens his eyes, yet barely could he fight against that dreadful white light shining in his eyes. The only way he could move forward is by crawling on the ground with his eyes shut.

With no knowledge of how long he crawled for, he has already reached his limit and used up all of his strength. Yet whenever he feels like stopping, he could always feel some electrical currents awaiting.

Suddenly two hands press down on his back and force him to stop. Countless currents pass through his body all at once.

He feels that there's someone pulling him by his hands and dragging him as he walks. He slowly opens his eyes to see that it's that professor.

With no idea why, those hands feel sort of cold despite there's a pair of gloves on them. He could sort of feel that this coldness doesn't come from the gloves but rather the body temperature of the professor himself. When he thinks of this, the professor turns his head and looks at him dead in the eye; however, still with no expression on his face. Suddenly, it seems as if the surrounding light starts darkening. As for those hands that dragged him and this expressionless person before his eyes, it all becomes tiny pieces scattered around in an instant.

A chaotic jumble of disorderly music bursts out and leaves him with no choice but to cover his ears. The next second a large gust of wind comes by and cuts his body as if with hundreds of sharp knives, leaving many wounds behind. Then violent wild gusts of wind come from all directions, ripping the skin and flesh from moment to moment to fill the air with a bloody smell. After the winds have passed, those scattered pieces connect together again, and soon a human figure stands straight and tall to walk before his eyes. That person presses down a button, and countless currents gather up using his body as the center. He then quickly falls asleep in the dark.

He awakes in screaming. Tsukiya and others come and hurriedly undo the machinery equipped on him. Then Mai takes out a white handkerchief to wipe away the sweat on his face, and then hands him a cup of water.

He thanks Mai and then quickly devours that cup of water despite the fact that the pace of his breathing hasn't returned to normal. With that, he picks up a light jacket and walks out of the lab with Futoumiya silently following behind him.

Although the client appears to be pretty worn out, he takes pretty stable steps with no trace of daze. This is in fact beyond what Futoumiya anticipated.

Futoumiya knows very well that the intensity of The Dream Exploring Machine will vary depending on the user's mental condition. After all, it was invented during the time that Tsukiya was involved in Tahou's experiments.

In order to speed up the dream, either stop the dream midway when time's up or increase stimulation of the cerebral cortex, which means increasing the intensity of the electrical current itself. Maybe it wouldn't cause any problems if the user happens to be someone else, yet because the client himself has great stress, therefore he always has stressful dreams in which reality is mixed into fake imagination. From what appeared in the dream that the client just had, there's no doubt that they did increase the intensity of stimulation towards the cerebral cortex, which happens to also increase the intensity of the feeling of pain in the dream.

The amount of electrical current that they originally used wouldn't cause any damage to the human body, and there's definitely a limit to increasing the intensity so that the user's life wouldn't be harmed. Yet, when it gets to a certain amount it'll still cause some burden to the user. Within short time, the user's mind will be very active. Afterwards, there'll be a significant decrease in stamina, along with some other possible side effects.

Even after being informed of these things, the client still decided to go with it. Hopefully such determination will help them accomplish their wish quickly—

Under dim light, the bit of light from the computer flashes on Haibara's face. She speedily types away on the keyboard and clicks with the mouse. Using a speed that the average person cannot compare to, she sorts out the data that Tsukiya sent her along with the data that she originally collected and documented.

As she sorts it out, she starts frowning. These days, she has been analyzing the data day and night. She has viewed it several times, a couple of tens if not over a hundred times by now. Haibara could literally claim that she knows everything by heart, yet she still feels as if there's something that isn't quite right, as if there's something that's—

"Professor Suzukawa of UTokyo...well no, there hasn't been any traces of him lately." The officer who's responsible for this case was wondering why Inspector Kudo came to him, until he heard him say "Todai". With that, the officer doesn't think much more about motives, he just hands the info to the Inspector.

After all, Inspector Kudo graduated from UTokyo himself. Not to say if he was a student of Suzukawa's by any chance, this professor does happen to be a pretty important figure at the university, and so it does make sense that the Inspector would come looking through the files of this missing person case immediately upon returning to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

As he sit down at his office desk and flips through the case file, he sort of starts frowning as he lightly bites down on his lower lip. He had already read the info in the case file before.

Yet when he returns, he discovers that they really haven't made much new progress, and if there is progress it's really not anything that's all that important. There's nothing really worth examining, and so he closes the file and lets out a sigh. He decides to turn his attention to another direction for investigation.

In a fully lighted interrogation room enclosed by four walls, there doesn't seem to be much decoration of any sort in this small space. There's only a desk, two chairs, and a desk lamp that's not turned on. Normally it would appear to be quite empty.

And now, there's a cuffed up criminal to add to this room. Some extra beard has grown on his face since he came a few days ago. He shows his refusal to cooperate by putting his head down the entire time. Sitting across from the criminal is an awfully frustrated newbie officer scratching his head as he faces a blank notepad.

Kudo walks into the room without making a sound, takes a glance at the officer s notepad, takes a pat on his shoulder and tells him to go back for now.

"Well, aren't you stubborn," Kuroba poses like Futoumiya and says so with a smiling poker face.

Upon hearing this voice, the criminal starts to sweat cold sweat. He lifts his head up to see that it's indeed the leader from that night.

"Now, no need to be so nervous, Mr. Imposter." As Kuroba says so, he looks the criminal dead in the eye. Every word, every sentence that Kuroba says, along with those pauses, they all seem to poke fun at him.

"You..."

Kuroba doesn't wait for Mr. Imposter to finish. Kuroba just stands up, drags the chair with him, and sits down next to Mr. Imposter.

"Relax," says Kudo with a stern face, "we don't mean any harm."

Not only does this not help the man relax, in fact that change in the tone gives him the heebee jeebees. Another thing that the man doesn't get, is the fact that there's only two people in the room including him, yet this guy happens to have used "we" when he spoke.

It annoys him a lot that he can't control the fact that he's actually trying to avoid looking at this guy's eyes because he's afraid of him. In fact, he feels a chill behind his back when he does look at those eyes, as if they can see through everything.

"What's the matter?" As Kuroba starts getting closer to him, he can't help but move more and more to the side until he ultimately falls and sits onto the ground.

"Are you alright?" Kudo reaches out his hand, yet the man moves back a little more.

"Such a scaredy-cat. It's not like I'm gonna eat you or something."

"You...it's just like that night..."

Along with that surprise which shows on his face, is a few seconds of silence. "Hey you, tell me about what it was like that night!" He raises his voice a little and grabs the man by his shirt to stare into his eyes directly so that those eyes have no chance of escaping like they had been.

Him now isn't an Inspector who's questioning a criminal like he normally is, all calm and everything, but instead he's a beast ready to rip apart the prey that he captured. He's not a piece on a game board with little use, but rather a fierce soldier who charges bravely.


	9. Chapter 8

Only upon seeing that the man seems to have trouble breathing does he calm down and release him.

"Who are you..." the man says lightly.

"What a coincidence," he says as he pulls the chair towards himself and sits on top of it again, "that's exactly what I want to ask you."

The man stays on the ground and a sly grin appears on his face. "So this is how you cops aka the good people treat criminals...not any different from how we do it." Somehow this fact reassures him and makes him feel a little better.

The light suddenly flashes on and off for a few seconds. There's now a sharper look in his eyes as he asks: "are you a member of that organization looking for the Pandora gem?" As if it can help him to see many of those who he hates in one person.

The smile on the man's face suddenly disappears. Without knowing who the heck this guy is, he shouldn't just give a response right away. Otherwise, it might cause him serious trouble as with the possibility of death. There's no time for him to get carried away with memories.

"Does it matter if I am or not?"

"Who knew that those lowly rascals hadn't been fully wiped out yet." There's no emotion to his voice at all.

The man doesn't answer. He manages to get up by himself despite being hand-cuffed, and sits back on the chair.

"What do you want from impersonation Kid?" says Kudo calmly.

"That outfit of his is pretty nice. I just wanted to try it on and see how it feels like to be The Great Phantom Thief."

He sets his legs on the table sort of crossed with his right on top of his left. There's a sense of scorn to his tone.

Kudo doesn't say anything. He reaches in the inner side of his coat to search for something. At this time, the light flashes on and off again, and along with the flashing of the light is the "thump", the sound of his heart pumping. Then the interrogation room completely darkens. Light from outside the room travels in through the seam of the window, as if out of all places in the police department, the open place where this strange occurrence exists is this room that they're in.

Maybe this type of thing happens to be just a coincidence, but this still causes his heart to pump at a faster rate.

Then the lighting returns to normal. Kudo holds up a pen in his right hand while he uses his left to flip open the notepad on his lap. Then he picks up the notepad and writes something.

"If you're unwilling to cooperate then fine," he says coldly, "but..." The corner of his lips goes up a little in angle, as if he's smiling. "What would be your fate," he says with a sarcastic tone, bites down on the top of the pen, and then removes it from his mouth to say: "when it comes time, the sentencing won't be any lighter." With that, Kudo writes some more on the notepad and then lifts his head to stare straight at the man. That coldness coming from those eyes instantly travel through the man and forces cold sweat to drip down his face.

He originally thought that this young man in front of his very eyes now was just a normal small leader, no different from those useless police officers who always got fooled by the real Kid, otherwise this lad wouldn't have fallen into his trap the first time. If it wasn't for the uncertainty in the instructions, then he would have just finished them off by firing the gun with real bullets and let the lad say goodbye with this world a long time ago. Who knew that a few days of rest in the hospital could have transformed a weak and scholarly-looking young lad into a fearless experienced elite.

"So you wanna know what it was like that night." Hearing this, Kudo Kuroba's ears prick up and he pretty much holds his breath as he awaits for the continuation. "Release me," says the man who then pauses for a while to examine the look on his face, which happens to be a frown, "what if I request so?"

The test doesn't end up with a result that the man expected. Instead, all Kudo Kuroba does is just lightly laugh a little, whereas the man suddenly laughs out loud as if he amused himself.

He puts the notepad on the table and then stands up to start circling around the table and the mand as he holds his chin, thinking of something.

After he goes around for a minute, the man feels a little uncomfortable. "Hey, I m begging you to stop." As he says so, he closes his eyes for a while and pinches the philtrum.

"Sorry," he says as his pats the man's shoulder. "I was just thinking," as he says so, he leans closer to the man and lightly speaks right into his ear: "what kinds of training methods do The Organization use?"

"Huh?"

"Speaking of which, I don't even know what to call you. You won't mind that I call you Mr. Imposter, will you?"

The light starts flashing again. Mr. Imposter blinks a few times unconsciously. All sorts of sounds from the outside along with the sound of the air conditioner travel into his ear. The sound of human talking, machine functioning, typing...all sorts of things that he didn't pay attention to now all of a sudden magnify many times larger when he closes his eyes.

He opens his eyes and cannot control himself but to let out a sneeze. The edges of his sight slightly blur a little.

"Imposter...Kid-san," as he says so, he holds up a monocle in his left hand, "do you still remember this?"

The fake Kid rubs his eyes and then takes a close look at that thing. Kuroba then pulls out another monocle and loosens his fingers a little. The two monocles start swinging with the movement of his hand, and the brightness of the room sort of goes down.

Mr. Imposter decides to close his eyes, but after some time he opens them again to turn his head in some other direction and shift his focus somewhere else. The lad also moves with him and follows his eyes wherever they go. This is when he takes notice of the lad's eyes, that pair of sharp eyes which he cannot escape. As if possessed by some sort of magical power, he cannot help but get drawn into those eyes.

"Answer me." The only thing that can travel into those covered ears is the emotionless and calm voice of a man—

The man awakes with sound of fingers snapping. Kudo opens the door and walks out, whereas two officers have to come to take him out. "Thanks for your help," says Kudo Kuroba with a smile on the face while standing by the doorway, "Zoukai Takahashi-san."

Takahashi's eyes are wide open in surprise, yet he has no words to speak as he's dragged back to his prison cell.

Kudo has taken a few classes related to hypnotism in the past, except he has never successfully learned it and used it on any criminals. The good thing is that before coming back today in the morning, he consulted with Tsukiya and was able to get a tiny amount of an anaesthetic which has no color and no smell and takes effect as time goes by and it dissipates.

Everything that just happened, he was here to see it all. Kudo was pretty impressed by Kuroba for that fact that he was able to get the gist of hypnotism in those few minutes. That is to say, Kuroba's foundation as a magician did help him quite a bit.

The way that magic works requires the magician to use the skill of his hands and tools to get people's attention in order to accomplish the best visual effect, in other words an illusion. Today, all he did was just use his skills to accomplish something similar, hypnosis, by adding some difficulty on top of visual effect by playing with the man's consciousness. Speaking of which, it's sort of ironic that Mr. Imposter seemed to be the most comfortable under the condition in which he was on guard and watched out for everything. Yet the level's not there. Mr. Imposter was cautious of his movements and words, but he forgot to think of the real goal beyond having him being cautious of certain actions which involved body contact.

But as he suspected, Takahashi happens to be just a low-ranking member, a bait that The Organization threw out to lure out Kaitou Kid. And now, he's just a piece that they threw away. However, this thrown-away piece does make a point with comments like: "physical and mental agility of that which can compare to members of The Organization", "instantaneous change of tone and character", "the persistence of a maniac", "and that fearsome force which scares the crap out of people", etc. All of this indeed describe this body which doesn't belong to just oneself, this body that seems to have been strengthened through an experiment and is also feared by himself—

It's three in the morning, not many people or cars are active even on the streets of the city in the dark night. Except starting from the second street after he leaves the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, there would always be the sound of another car's engine behind them. Stopping before a red light, he takes a look at the rearview mirror and sees that black car exposed under the street light with some distance away. Like he thought, it's the first-party.

They drive pass more roads which no longer have any pedestrians on them. Every time they stop, sleepiness begins to dominate and so the way they keep awake is with a pinch on the arm.

There's no communication throughout the whole way since just concentrating on driving wastes them enough energy. It's a good thing that it only takes close to thirty minutes to get to the clinic.

It may be that this time is hard to stay awake for anyone, on the way to the lab, surprisingly Futoumiya appears to be wandering off somewhere else in his mind instead of being focused on what's going on here. This happens to be quite interesting to him, to think that a man like this would show his weakness so easily.

It may be that he's way too tired now, this time it doesn't take long for him to far asleep compared to all the other times in the lab.

Before he falls asleep completely, he takes a look at Futoumiya. To tell the truth, it's not that Futoumiya appears to be all that tired, but he cannot tell what secrets are hidden behind that mask—

Warm sunlight shines on his body. It reads eleven exactly on the watch worn on his left wrist, so he knocks on the door before his eyes.

Hearing "please come in", he puts on that poker face which a magician is the best at.

"Relax." Maybe it s because Professor Suzukawa realizes the fact that Kuroba doesn't feel all that at ease, after ten minutes of interviewing, he suddenly just tells him this.

Another five minutes pass by, and he his consciousness is already in a haze.

The only thing that he can feel, is the fact that cold hands drag him on the cold floor by the hand while he has no way of even struggling—

Originally he was thinking that after all these years, there should be many crowds of people of whom he's not familiar with, but when he gets here does he realize that now should be summer vacation, so it makes total sense to feel that there's something missing from the schoolyards and that it's rather silent.

It's exactly noon. With no caution at all, Kudo begins the interview with Professor Suzukawa sitting across from him. Just three minutes into the interview, the way that this professor speaks gets deeply ingrained into his mind, so monotone and boring. As if being hypnotized by this type of voice, he eventually goes unconscious—

Aquamarine currents surround his whole body. It's just the screaming of him and the other person which echoes in the lab.

After the currents have stopped, they're no longer physical individuals. Suzukawa removes the protection mask to reveal an expressionless face. As if there's another mask behind the mask that he'll never be able to see through—

Four in the morning, he has already escaped from dreamland despite the fact that he still feels a little sleepy. The only thing that's clearly imprinted in his mind, are their masks, those masks of human skin which cannot be destroyed even if ripped thousands of times.

He returns to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and walks before that mirror of truth again to trace the outline of the person before his eyes and recall that day.

It seems as if his masks also cannot be removed—because they live in his heart, even if that piece of human skin on his face is ripped until it's just a blur of bloody flesh.

"Mirror, oh mirror," he says as he looks into the person reflected onto the mirror, "did I choose this face, or did this face choose me?" He himself starts laughing immediately after saying so.

Silverish white moonlight shines in, he arranges his hair a little bit and then his hand moves to cover half of his face up. He smiles bitterly, and at this moment a thought appears as he faces the mirror.

Maybe, it's not all that hard to see through a mask, but do people really want to?

Probably not.


	10. Chapter 9

Principal Fujimura came to UTokyo early in the morning to water and trim the plants. He didn't expect that just a few minutes after he arrived, there would be literally eight police cars showing up on the road before the front entrance of the school. A man dressed in dark blue comes up to him looking all serious with a police notebook in one hand and a search warrant in the other, telling him that the investigation of the disappearance of Professor Suzukawa is ongoing, but also, Suzukawa is suspected of doing illegal experimentation and research.

It's necessary to search the places which Suzukawa often goes to in order to find the truth and prove that UTokyo has nothing to do with all of this.

"Hope you don't mind too much." A man dressed in black puts his left hand on his chest and bows at the standard ninety-degrees to the principal. "We might be coming here often for the next few days. I'm Kuroda, a private detective asked to help with the investigation."

Although the exact situation isn't all that clear to him, the principal has no choice but to put his beloved gardening hobby to the side for now and let the officers get to work.

"I see you've gotten into character pretty quickly, Fu..."

"Shh," he whispers as he brings his pointer finger to the lips, "Miai-san don't forget, my name's Kuroda."

Upon hearing this, Miai smiles. "Of course, I know what I'm doing."

As far as Miai can remember, this person...Ou Futoumiya always seems to be surrounded by mysteries which others cannot see through. Maybe it's because he has never stopped acting for the past thirty years, he always knows how to put on a perfect show for others.

No matter under what circumstances, no matter the conditions, and no matter who he has to face….for him, it's all the same. The only thing that matters is the mission.

Sometimes Miai's just really curious, this man who had the sense of "self" taken away from him from birth but also was granted with everything else, does he have anything that he cannot let go of? Is there anything, that serves as the real purpose as to why he lives as a person, as an individual?

Even if there is, that's probably something that Miai won't ever get to know about for this lifetime, even if they've already known each other for nearly a decade.

Even his like for black is probably just because for its convenience to camouflage into the night, which also serves useful for keeping himself alive during the process of any mission.

Miai has no idea what in the world Futoumiya could be thinking when he decided to bring thirty-eight people along with them. Not to mention, who knows if it's a coincidence or not, there's at least three officers who have connections with Tahou. Something that he can pretty know for sure, is the fact that Tahou rarely gets so involved in matters of the outside world, at least not to the point that they're willing to gather so many members of Tahou who serve as policemen and possibly risk leaking their identities. Which means that this case shouldn't be as easy as it may seem on the surface, at least he can't imagine how serious an illegal experiment and research done by just Suzukawa can get.

Who could it be that wills to spend all that money to have them deal with this, and even have a member of T20 get involved with this work himself? He surely has no clue.

Twenty-three out of thirty-eight people are responsible for searching Suzukawa's office and the classrooms where he teaches, while the other fifteen are responsible for every other classroom, every hallway, essentially every corner of UTokyo. This kind of setup focuses the investigation mainly where Suzukawa is the most likely to leave clues and also accounts for secondary scopes.

Sadly, a whole day of investigation amounts to pretty much the same at Suzukawa's home, just a bunch of books and info relating to biology, especially genomics, and some sci-fi movies as well. There isn't any evidence of actual experiment, at least not any relating to the situation that the client described.

Of course they saw it coming, so they're not too surprised about the results.

Yet after looking over their working efficiency, people do feel a little down in mood. That is, all but one person who not only doesn't feel a little depressed but even sort of delighted, which happens to be Futoumiya. Miai couldn't tell, whether or not this sort of delight happens to be a delight that comes from facing a good challenge. But judging from the mission, being stuck in this situation isn't a good thing for it may affect what Tahou has to gain.

Come to think of it, it seems as if this man has never had any type of fear that a normal person would, which might have something to do which the way which he was taught to think and trained when he was little.

What normal people would feel happy over, he feels nothing, and what normal people find frustrating, instead happens to be his entertainment?

That's an empty body walking in the world of the living dead. He moves his hands which have the strings that direct them, and naturally takes control of them so that they work for him until everyone cannot fight anymore, until blood decorates the whole place.

He will turn to see what he has done and smile as he directs those corpses forward, until the next war begins.

He knows very well what he's doing, and he's surely aware of the fact that it's infinite and that he has no way of escaping.

Did he choose his life, or did this life choose him? Not that it actually matters all that much—

"Right, all we have to do is find that guy, Suzukawa." As if having a conversation with the person in front of him, he leans on the mirror, and stares at those eyes. "It doesn't matter who chose who."

Once again, he steps into the clinic, he steps into the underground tunnel illuminated by torches, he steps onto that floor tile, he steps onto that second underground floor illuminated by white lighting, and arrives at the lab to sit in the same old seat of The Dream Exploring Machine.

Before falling asleep, he takes a look at the surveillance room. Although it's just for a short moment, but indeed he does see that creepy strange smile on Futoumiya's face—

Kaito Kuroba happens to be sitting on that chair again, only this time he sees that the seat across from him belonging to Suzukawa happens to be empty. Time flies by quickly, and with every movement of the second hand does the sound travel into his ears. When the time of waiting gets long, boredom starts to dominate, so Kuroba starts observing the design of the chair. First the material, the material seems to be some special type of wood. It feels familiar, but he can't quite get what it is. Then there's the handle—this is when Professor Suzukawa come back with a pile of papers.

Originally, Kuroba was sitting up straight with his arms on the handles and chatting with the professor pretty excitedly. Yet just within a few minutes after the professor came back, Kuroba already entered dreamland—

Coming right after Kuroba happens to be Kudo. Unlike Kuroba, he has to force himself to sit up straight and face the professor of the college that he graduated from with the most professional attitude, as if he's not all that tired.

Yet except for the first few minutes, Kudo doesn't hear any of the other things all that clearly at all. That boring monotone voice of the professor's slowly drives him into sleep.

Just like yesterday's dream. They both show up to their interviews and then get dragged into the lab by the professor. There's no excess memory that they can recall—

A slightly darkened white light shines on the autopsy table. A white sheet covers the person who not only doesn't move but also can't even breath anymore. A hand uncovers the sheet to see that below it is already a pale white corpse with a nasty blurred face which cannot be distinguished.

That hand approaches that overly rough face and slowly goes by the face features which cannot be identified to feel the temperature of death—

He suddenly wakes up from his dream. The lighting is still pretty dark like before. The machinery and the people, nothing here has changed.

"Tsukiya-san," he says as he breathes heavily, "I don't remember seeing that corpse ever," and then he takes a few more deep breaths, "what's with that scene?"

She smoothes her hair back and then holds her chin. "Well, there was about fifteen minutes of the screen being completely dark," she says as she takes a peek at the electricity meter and verifies that this time they did crank up the intensity of electricity. She then smiles in a way which people cannot tell what's the reason behind it. "It may be a precognitive dream, who knows."

Upon hearing this, he doesn't know how he should respond. When he finally gets ahold of things, he immediately runs out with Futoumiya following behind him—

Laying on the cold floor of the autopsy room is a newbie forensic pathologist, Hasegawa-san. That white light shines down on her, making her look even paler, and as beautiful as sleeping beauty.

As for the person on the autopsy table, it's a man whose face has been beaten to the point that no features can be distinguished. Just two hours before, Inspector Kudo left for an unknown reason. During this time period, Zoukai Takahashi appeared to have committed suicide by banging his head on the wall. Hasegawa originally took Takahashi's body onto the autopsy table so that she could dissect, inspect, and record on a first hand basis to prevent anyone from complicating things. Who knew, there would be someone who would break into the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, knock out an assistant forensic pathologist, kill Hasegawa who was mainly responsible for inspecting Takahashi's body, steal Hasegawa's body, and then just abandon him on the streets after ruining his face.

Within just two short hours, two lives have vanished under their eyes just like that, gone in an instant like the wind. As for the suspect that they caught, he bit open the poison capsule in his mouth the moment they caught him.

Futoumiya opens up an email to read that the precognitive dream did become reality. Then he closes his laptop and drives to UTokyo.

At this time, the investigation team that Miai leads still happens to be investigating in shifts, although they still haven't made any new discoveries.

Futoumiya silently stands in the middle of Suzukawa's office. Over and over again, he calmly observes the place with no hurry. Three minutes later, he stops and just stands there thinking. Two minutes later, a smile appears on his face. Then he requests to get a metal detector.

Although Miai doesn't really get what this person happens to be thinking about, he still orders people to do as Futoumiya says—

"Fujimura-san," Kuroda says as he observes the expression on the principal's face with great interest, "you seem to be awfully surprised."

Everyone here including Miai and Kuroda, a total of forty people responsible for investigation, all look towards Principal Fujimura. In those people, there's thirty-nine pairs of eyes awaiting some sort of confession. Yet, he just stops acting surprised with an exaggerated expression, but instead says very modestly: "I know nothing of this."

"Well then, Miai-san, it's fine," he says with a friendly smile, "this should have nothing to do with him." As he says so, he takes another look at Fujimura. "But, if it does by any chance, we shall go through all the necessary procedures in order to ensure justice." With that being said, he starts to investigate the newly found lab.

Just like how it was in the client's dream, this place has a bunch of stuff like materials and info, along with some smaller machines and blueprints of new inventions; the atmosphere seems rather unlively.

The main invention is of course this human-fusing machine standing in the middle of the lab, and also a tool of evil and sin which tortured Kudo and Kuroba like no tomorrow within a short twenty-four hours. Although Suzukawa didn't record down the way that can return them two back to normal, but using what they've found along with the technology that Tahou has, they should be able to solve this problem of the client. Yet, the devilish creator of this catastrophe, that professor, is still on the loose. Without finding that professor, they cannot truly bring back justice to the client.

As he thinks of this, Futoumiya steps forward to see the laptop computer in the front of the human-fusing machine that's surrounded by a bunch of officers, and then carefully uses his gloved hands to press down on the on button.

Seeing that nothing happens, he checks to see that the outlet, the plug, that there's no problem with these sorts of things. Then he inspects the machine some more, only to reach the conclusion that the data and controls have all been broken.

He smiles some more. Like he suspected, it's not that simple.


	11. Chapter 10

Ever since Kudo returned to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, he spent most of his time in the autopsy room. As others walk in and out, he just silently examines the two corpses which still have some warmth to them.

First is Dr. Hasegawa-san, who originally was here to carry out a postmortem for someone else. It appears that she may have gotten a concussion serious enough to take her life away from her, possibly due to a fight with the intruder. The other forensic pathologist happens to be currently under medical emergency care in the Beika General Hospital.

When Inspector Kudo came back, it was discovered that Hasegawa had just stopped breathing. In order to maintain the original conditions of the crime scene, he had to order others to not move the bodies, so she still lies on the cold ground. That is to say, dead bodies will be brought here in the end anyway, the only difference is whether or not they'll be moved onto the autopsy table.

As for Takahashi, except for his corpse being moved to the autopsy room, there hasn't been much change to the death scene at the prison cell. Although they all think that Takahashi committed suicide, but they still recorded all the details of the death scene properly as they would have with any other ones. After quite some time of examining the corpse, Kudo still couldn't solve the mystery behind the death of Takahashi, so he has three officers stand next to the two bodies and keep guard and then he heads toward the direction of prison.

Bright light shines down on him during the whole way. In contrast to this happens to be those criminals who rather cringe in dark corners, not knowing what to do, or just lazily lie down listlessly. People here are of all sorts; actually, they're not all that different from those living normally in the colorful world outside with distinct and unpredictable mentalities. The only common thing between them which distinguishes them from those outside, is the fact that they violated the law.

Seeing that once in a while there's one or two criminals who notice his arrival and decide to spit as a symbol of their dissatisfaction, Shinichi Kudo just continues to walk forward without any expression on his face. He knows very well that some of them were caught by him, while others solely hate him for being a police officer who takes an opposite stance from them. The route that he took in order to get to this Inspector position of his allows him to know very well of the fact that within the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, there are also some who withhold a distinct stance.

Youth has already faded. The body now bears the weight of heavy armor. We see that the longer one wears a mask, the harder it is to remove. And the ears, and the eyes now are clear. So now he realizes, the world is not all about good and evil, nor is everything either black or white. Even so, he still upholds justice and fights time after time for faith and belief, to punish those who break the law and bring them to the face of justice, as if doing so could fill those empty gray holes in his heart.

It's him who chose this sort of life and the fate that accompanies; life didn't choose him, and neither did fate just come up to him and knock on his door like that.

For Kaito Kuroba, it happens to be the same. Perhaps it's the same for virtually everyone.

Perhaps it's because he has been with Kudo for a significant amount of time, originally Kuroba who was very uncomfortable with the police has gotten used to coming in and out of this place. Except, he still felt a little resentful when Kudo brought him here. Yet not long after does he realize, what he resents may not be Kudo bringing him along with himself, but rather having to own up to the fact that he who believes in art being the essence of life indeed has the same kind of face, an ugly face, as do other criminals.

Finally reaching an empty prison cell, he stops and walks in after the warder leading the way unlocks the door. He looks around to get a general glance of the place. So far, he hasn't discovered any other details which deprives it from the definition of normal besides that clear blood stain on the wall. Ten minutes pass, Kudo Kuroba still hasn't found any evidence which can overthrow the whole thing with Takahashi committing suicide. For some reason, he just stands in the middle of the prison cell and stares at the blood stain, as if this enables him to see a different truth.

At least, that's what it seems like to the warder. He can't really understand what the legendary *Heisei Holmes* is thinking. All that he knows for sure is that Takahashi suddenly went nuts and kept pounding his head on the wall when he saw that no one was near his prison cell at the time. When people heard the noise and rushed in, he had already died. Not to mention, Inspector did check the camera recordings to see that it matched his testimony perfectly. So it seems to him that it's just a waste of energy to continue investigating.

Another five minutes pass, Kudo comes out the prison cell without saying anything at all and goes for the surveillance room again. This time, he doesn't hurry nor rush at all when he investigates all videotapes for the past few days relating to Takahashi. About another three or four hours, Kudo calls for that warder that previously accompanied him to give him some instructions, and then he leaves again—

This time he still decides to use higher than normal levels of electrical currents for dream exploration in order to save time. It may be that he's already used to this sort of abnormal equipment on top of him being too tired in the first place, just a few seconds before The Dream Exploring Machine starts doing the real work, he has already fallen into light sleep.

This time, the dream setting is still Suzukawa's office. Him now already happens to be barely conscious. All that he hears is Suzukawa raise his tone a little in pitch for once to ask him all excitedly: "Kuroba-san, what do you think of jin..."

As his mind stays hazy, the plain office transforms into a laboratory in an instant. Dark blue light sort of shines down on all equipments and also the two people tied to the two ends of the human-fusing machine. With a closer look does it become evident, those are their original bodies which they haven't seen in a while.

This scene then suddenly becomes that mirror of truth. Through those human eyes in the mirror, he sees a magnified blood red.

Maybe it's because of a visual shock, he closes his eyes and crouches down. Then he opens his eyes, only to see a water droplet flow out from the faucet and into the sink. Somehow, in the sink there's some hairs as thin as needles that suddenly get magnified in his view. Those hairs then instantly become strands of blood; the smell of rusted iron immediately comes for the face—

It is because he didn't rest well enough so his eyesight worsened? He literally missed that small red dot on Takahashi's back just because there's a birthmark.

If that happens to be a precognitive dream, then maybe there's some other secret in it.

With this thought, he pretends to take a restroom break, but in reality—

There's a part of the videotape that shows that Zoukai Takahashi had switched his room once. At the time, there were two warders who accompanied him. One walked ahead of them to lead the way and didn't really communicate with him. The other happened to pat him on the back before he walked into the prison cell. When that scene gets magnified and replayed, one could see that in fact that warder's middle finger and ring finger of his right hand were tightly close to each other. That is to say, they were that way from the very start of when them three entered the frame.

Therefore one can predict, this particular warder may have placed something that wasn't so visible between the middle finger and ring finger of his right hand; for example, a thin needle that isn't all that easy to notice. That is to say, Kudo Kuroba happens to have found a small empty bottle taped to the inner side of the cover to the toilet tank. According to examination, there happens to be some poison residue left over. It Kudo Kuroba may say so, it seems that the murderer failed himself by being too "smart". True, keeping it with him or just throwing it in some trash can does make it too easy to get caught, and there wasn't any time for him to deal with it by bringing it out.

Then in the end, the toilet tank does seem like the better choice, but hiding it in such a peculiar location actually sort of aids the investigation process since his opponents happen to be Kudo who started detective work as far back as twelve years ago, and Kuroba who happens to have served as a phantom thief for many years and is a pro at hiding. He got it wrong from the start by bringing in this sort of special poison made by the organization that he belongs to, and running to the restroom to prepare before attempting his mission. If instead he just prepared the needle ahead of time before coming, and then just flush it down the toilet, there wouldn't be anything to really worry about. At least, there wouldn't be any strong evidence that could prove it was him who did it.

A bunch of people surround and get ahold of him, and then immediately a towel gets placed in this warder's mouth. Kudo takes out that stun-gun wristwatch that he often used when he was Conan and puts the warder to sleep with a tranquilizer dart, leaving the warder with no chance to fight back. Then, they throw him in jail and find that he hid a poison capsule in his teeth after removing the towel from his mouth.

Like they expected, after he wakes up, they face much difficulty trying to get him to open his mouth and answer questions. After all, that's a person who was brave enough to commit suicide at anytime if he failed at accomplishing his mission.

So Kuroba uses hypnosis once again, yet the results were pretty much the same as when he used it on Takahashi. Natsuyama happens to be another minor organization member who was simply told to follow orders—

"What did you say…."

"You heard me very clear. No matter how many times I repeat it, there's not going to be any changes." As Haibara says so, she wipes the table where he just spilled his coffee. "Over the past few days, I've been analyzing the data. It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to believe it."

He was about to say something, except Haibara interrupts him: "I don't know the specifics, but I think there's no doubt to this result." With that being said, she takes a sip of coffee and then continues: "By the way,"

At the same time, Futoumiya comes to UTokyo by himself as Private Detective Koda. Somehow, he cannot stop himself from coming to Suzukawa's lab again. As if there's some sort of magical power which draws him in, he longs for the truth. That is, even if he has investigated this place which can be described as ruins for quite some time and still hasn't found any breakthrough point. Even so, he continues to search and investigate with great delight, as if he never gets tired. He has no intention to slack off for not even a split second, and neither will he give up, all just because he believes that the secret behind this place will be uncovered with his own hands—

"Anyhow," she says as she's about to leave, "there's not that many coincidences in this world." She leaves a cold reminder and then walks to the neighboring Agasa Residence.

She sees three familiar old friends and Hakase sit on the couch chatting and eating watermelon. When they see that she has returned, all four eyes focus on her and they stopped with what they were originally chatting about.

"It's been a long time since you guys got a case, right?" As she says so, she observes their faces to see that so far there hasn't been any change to their expressions. "I have one in my hand that I just got, from the famous Inspector Shinichi Kudo." She puts an envelope with the words "to the Detective Boys" written on it that appears to have some width to it on the table. With the three having taken over the envelope, having read what is written in the letter inside, and having counted the total amount, large smiles appear on their face whereas confusion is written all over Hakase's face.

Hakase pulls Haibara to the side without knowing what to say all of a sudden.

"Well, there are times when our Tantei-san has to seek help from others."

Upon hearing Haibara say this, Hakase just gulps down the words that almost came out of his mouth. Eleven years have gone by since the Detective Boys was founded, and these children have now graduated from high school, so it should be fine.

Oh well, if there's any problem by any chance, as an elder in his sixties he doesn't really have the energy to take care of it anyway. It's time for children to go out into the world and have their own journeys.

That is to say, he's still a little concerned since not long after accepting the case, they immediately change into weird costumes for disguise and get scolded by Haibara.

In the end, he and Ai-chan still have to back them up—

It may just be that he's too nervous, but before the Detective Boys started off on their journey, what appears in his head when he takes a small nap at home are all those weird scenes relating to Suzukawa's lab. When he opens his eyes, none of it sticks around in his mind anymore. He keeps having this funny feeling, and it's not a good feeling, yet he can't seem to describe it—

All lights in the lab have darkened. Even if it's Futoumiya who's used to being in the dark, this still seems to be a rather dangerous situation.

Many machines are attacking him, leaving him with not even the slightest bit of time to take a good deep breath. It seems as if he might've accidentally triggered the system and activated its attack mode. Like he suspected, the main control system here indeed was never deactivated.

Yet he doesn't have any fear at all. Instead, he just enjoys going back and forth in battle like a wild animal.

* * *

*Once again, like I said before, I will get to changing it to Reiwa in the future when I make more significant edits.

Speaking of which, when I first wrote this and set this during summer, I totally forgot about the fact that Japanese schools have their school year start and end in spring. Yep, that's what happens when you're too caught up with finishing a story and forget that there's different school systems beside the American one. So my timeline, when you consider the fact that Japanese schools generally have graduation go on during March and have school start in April with a good amount of break time throughout each season, is literally messed up. I think I might just keep the time setting the same, and then just remember to add the detail that the three are college students on summer break, along with changing Shinichi and Kaito's age from 28 to 29.

Oh yeah, here's something that you probably want to hear more— **the truth begins to get revealed in the next chapter. So be on the watch for updates if you've been dying to know what's behind it all. There's literally three more chapters to the main story+four parts to the epilogue=seven more chapters until this whole novel completely ends. Granted, the main ending comes in chapter 13. The epilogue is mostly first-person backstory+a change of perspective throughout the plot, but I say it's also pretty fascinating to read.**


	12. Chapter 11

Can't reply to guest comment so here's a thank you to Bobbyneko for liking this story:)

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It's nine at night, the summer sun has just set below the horizon and night quickly falls, bringing darkness along. The small neighborhood which didn't have much activity in the first place is now even more quiet. Genta Kojima takes in a big mouthful of coffee and then a bite of the eel from his bento. Though they've been staying at the same location and waiting for four hours, no one can be sure if there might be actual progression with the case the next second, so it's vital that he satisfies his belly at all times in order to put in 120% effort to work and focus efficiently.

"How's it going?" The sound of a woman suddenly appears to break the long silence within the car.

"Nothing so far." As Mitsuhiko Tsubaraya says so towards the Detective Boys Badge, he also keeps watch of the streets to not miss any changes.

"Remember to report any new progress you make."

"Gotcha." As Ayumi Yoshida says so, she also observes everything carefully with the only pair of binoculars that they have.

"The target came out!" Accompanying the hoarse yet loud sound of Genta which travels into her ears happens to be the sound of the car engine doing its work. Haibara originally thought that the day would just end like this, who knew that she would actually receive their news about an hour later.

Although she can't be sure, but the fact that the target actually came out in the middle of the night to do god knows what shall be done firms her view even more; that certainly isn't any kind presence.

They spend nearly seven hours following the target who went to all sorts of places including a pharmacy, a supermarket, a high class restaurant, a park, a gym, a flower shop, a food stand on the side of the street, a river, a beauty salon, a hardware store, a photographic studio, etc. The Detective Boys get tired out, and in the end they just return to the starting point. Haibara looked through all the messages and photos that they provide by text, and still cannot make anything out of them. She feels as if they've been fooled.

Wait a moment….

She revisits the photos one by one starting from the very beginning. It seems that every place that they went to, there's always this one man wearing casual clothing who appears in the most unnoticeable corners of certain photos. The main thing is, with the change of location, he also changes into an outfit that's somewhat different from the previous combination. The only thing that remains the same is the casualty in his style, and those dark orange decoration glasses before his eyes.

There's no chance of that, the fact that this tall man who seems to be in the 180s in centimeters appearing everywhere they go, being any coincidence. He seems to have changed his disguise every time, and from the angle that they snap the photos, it isn't possible to identify the specifics of the way he looks. Could it be that—

Kudo Kuroba once again comes to the Tsukiya Psychological Consultation Clinic. Once again he comes to the first and second underground floors, and eventually before the lab.

It may be that he didn't sleep enough, somehow he keeps seeing double images. So he pinches himself, and this condition gets a little better.

Once again he sits on the seat of The Dream Exploring Machine and quickly falls asleep. This time, all there is in front of him is darkness, and all he can hear is the hasty yet rather routine breathing sound of a man.

He opens his eyes to see a familiar figure fighting hard with all his might. His vision slowly clears up. He sees that this person is dressed fully in black, and what surrounds him, is a crowd of machines—

Not until his sight fully clears up, it suddenly darkens again. Then, he awakes with a sentence in his mind, a sentence by Suzukawa.

He doesn't know what that dream meant, but he believes that the figure should have been Futoumiya, and that the lab must have been Suzukawa's lab—

"Haibara Haibara," Mitsuhiko says while she was thinking, "another person came out." As he says so, another photo gets sent over.

"Follow him!" she immediately commands after seeing who that is—

"Ai-chan," says Ayumi as she breathes heavily while trying to catch her breath, "we looked for a long time, yet we still can't find her."

The sound of something dropping onto the ground is followed by the sound of mixed-up signals. Frightful surprise appears in those eyes which open wide. Genta hits the gas pedal without hesitation and immediate heads towards Hakase's house.

"It can't be..." Ayumi thinks to herself as tears circle in her eyes, "Ai-chan and Hakase will be fine."

Burning with impatience, they could not help but feel angry and fearful at the same time—

A short-haired lady walks before the plain house and knocks on the door. An older yet still rather beautiful woman with long light brown hair walks out and welcomes her in.

"Already done? Thanks a lot," that older woman tells her using sign language.

The short-haired woman nods her head, and then the long-haired woman pats her on the head. They then go walk down the stairs and into the undergrounds.

After fingerprint verification and iris recognition are done with, the doors automatically open. Yet unlike the doors, everything behind them are not familiar to her. However, she does feel as if she has seen this place before. Dark blue light dimly shines upon the entire laboratory. Located in the most interior and tied to the two ends of a machine, happens to be two bodies which look exactly the same.

"Thanks a lot, for actually coming here to seek your own death." There isn't any change in the tone of her voice, but on her face there's the addition of a smile.

The short-haired woman hadn't replied yet when the long-haired woman reaches into the inner side of her large white lab coat and takes out something that looks like a phone. "You should practice more with your sign language."

"You knew it from the start," the calm voice of a man comes out the mouth of the short-haired woman, "that I'm not Mai." Along with the slight change in the tone, he lets out a slight smile.

"So what do you do now?" says Tsukiya as she takes a few steps forward until there's only two meters of distance between them. She takes a swipe on the screen of the remote using her thumb, and a blue light comes on. "It seems that the first-party won't live for much longer, and you should be the only one left in the second party by now." As she says so, she smoothes her hair back and reveals the earphone worn on her right ear. The silence on the other side really satisfies and assures her—

The Detective Boys, with Genta leading the way, rush out from the car to see that all there is before them is just ruins, and leaning against the wall is a pile of broken down metal garbage—

"Mission..." she says with an abnormal voice, without any particular emotion involved, "target locked." That kind of tone accompanied by the emptiness in those eyes results in a chill crawling up the back—

"This is all part of your plan." Kudo stares dead straight into her eyes, not allowing any details of her actions to escape from his view.

"Well aren't you smart." She doesn't avoid him, and there's no delay to her verbal response. It seems that she's looking forward to the next step he takes.

"Saiesu Tsukiya, legend has it in the science field that she's an extraordinary genius. She started attending Waseda with a major in the arts at the age of sixteen, and then decided to go into the Department of Life Science and Medical Bioscience a month later while also minoring in Computer Science and Engineering. Few could match up to her accomplishments with research in genomics, especially cloning technology, at least when she was in school. After she graduated, it seemed as if she suddenly just disappeared. No one knew what kind of work she got into." Haibara's words replay themselves in his mind.

"Professor Suzukawa may have already, unfortunately, been murdered by her."

An image appears in his head in which that black-clothed person fights against that figure who appears to be Shinsanrou Suzukawa. Contrary to his appearance, he does not have any trouble moving around with great agility; in fact, he's so quick to the point that one could hardly find any weak spot and so could only manage to maintain a posture of defense.

"You're the one who killed Suzukawa."

"Why no," she says as she removes her glasses and puts them in her pocket, "all I did was have someone else dirty his knife." In those eyes, one could sense a feeling of sincerity.

Hidden behind that lightness, is the face of a devil. She takes a few more steps forward, and for the sake of being cautious he starts to take some steps backwards. He gets closer and closer to the two original bodies, and doesn't stop until she stops.

"What's your purpose for doing all this?"

She takes a look at the original bodies of Kudo and Kuroba. Without moving, they seem like dead bodies.

Yet somehow he could feel that they're still alive.

"Takes quite some effort and time to explain everything."

"Futoumiya of Tahou T20 actually accepting the deal as a private one, what's the chance of that?" Haibara's voice appears in his head again, "and arranging the meeting at the Psychological Consultation Clinic which is suited for investigating your lost memory even before knowing what you're requesting him to do, what's the chance of that?"

"Has to do with Futoumiya and Tahou."

"Beautiful, beautiful deduction."

He closes his eyes. What first pops up in his mind are the multiple warnings that Haibara gave him. Then, he sees a black-clothed man who seems to struggle a little as he fights with his bare hands. Although he's not familiar with that face, but he has a feeling that it's definitely Futoumiya.

Many wounds are visible on Futoumiya's body, and a fresh blood red bleeds through the openings on his black shirt. The only wound that's not bleeding happens to be the one on his charming fair-complexioned face. Of course Kuroba and Kudo know, that's because he's wearing a mask.

There's also wounds on the fake Suzukawa's body, yet those cuts are instead like empty holes without any red. There's also a wound on that face, a long one from his left eye to his right face, serving as a large seam.

Yet it doesn't seem to bother that guy at all. His face is expressionless and his eyes are full of emptiness. The next second, a punch hits Futoumiya right on the belly and another goes for his head.

He didn't get to the result of that punch when the image suddenly disappears. He opens his eyes to see that Tsukiya just removed her finger from the remote, and on her face there's still this strange smile which makes him feel hatred.

"She was one of our brilliant research scientists. After she had worked for us for more than a decade, she switched to being a psychological consultant." Another voice pops up in his mind. Those are the words that Futoumiya said when they first came here.

An interesting thought pops up. "Do you have some conflict with Futoumiya?" This sentence suddenly just escapes from his mouth.

"Indeed I do," she says as she frowns a little, "but I do have to thank him for granting me freedom."

Seeing that confusion is written all over his face, she continues to talk: "Since you won't live for long anyway." There's a unique feeling to that voice, the sort of low voice of a woman. As she says so, she takes out a gun located to the side of her body on her belt.

From the tone of her remark, he senses danger. The best choice to do now is to seize that gun and then that remote. But when he attempts to focus his eyes somewhere else, so does her eyes, they also move in the same direction as his, as if she sees through what he's thinking.

"Seventeen years ago, I joined Tahou after just having graduated from university, and I became one of the members of the Scientific Research Department." As she says so, she takes a seat on the experiment stand which has nothing on it, and casually wipes the gun using her lab coat. "You can't even imagine...besides the difference in basic authority and power that comes along with the ranked positions, equality thrives in that place more than any other."

She sets the gun and remote aside, and lifts her head up, as if she's expecting and looking forward to some sort of reaction.

He only knows a little bit about Tahou, but Kudou can really imagine the reality of the equality that she talks of.

No matter if one knows nothing of the world matters, if one's hands are coated with blood, if one is famous in a good or bad way, and no matter if one is on the black or white side...as long as one wills to submit to and work for Tahou, they'll accept anyone as part of them no matter who that might be. Yep, even if it's a family like Futoumiya, for every generation there has always been people who sell-willingly join, and others who accept the condition of never telling people about the existence of Tahou so that they can go live their normal lives.

Equally distributing those profits that belong to the members, dealing with members who do things wrong in a fair way, and just plainly existing on this world as they maintain control over everything. There's no need to a name, and neither to a stance. This is the type of organization that Tahou happens to be.

It's an organization whose founding date is unknown, and whose ends are yet to know.


	13. Chapter 12

"Our research became more and more mature over time." Tsukiya stops speaking for a while, and within this time gap Suzukawa's voice appeared in his mind again. "Kuroba-san, what do you think of *jinkouchinou*?" Then she continues saying: "That is, until that man was promoted to be a member of T20. He suggested to reform the field of research in artificial intelligence, and that's when the progress of the research to actualize artificial intelligence simulation of human stopped."

Tsukiya and him both turn to look at those bodies which look the same, and a chill crawls up his back.

"I continued to work for Tahou for another five years while also looking for a partner in the science field who would be willing to collaborate with me. So when I met Shinsanrou Suzukawa, in order to continue the research without anyone knowing, I opened this psychological consultation clinic after walking out the doors of Tahou's Scientific Research Department."

He takes a look at the whole laboratory. This is when he realizes that this sort of dark blue light and the temperature which makes him feel many chills, isn't just familiar to him simply because the setup happens to be the same with Suzukawa's lab. The thing is, he actually believed Tsukiya and thought that the one dream he had was indeed nothing more than a precognitive dream.

He rethinks what Tsukiya just said, and he gets a little confused. If she happens to have worked with Suzukawa doing private research, then all costs should come out of their own pockets. Although she had worked under Tahou for many years, meaning that she would have gotten not a penny less than what she earned, her savings on top of Suzukawa's still should not have been enough for an experiment conducted on such a large scale.

He can't be sure of this one, but the other lab that has The Dream Exploring Machine must have been somewhat sponsored by Tahou.

According to his judgment, since Tahou chose to end the research to actualize artificial intelligence simulation of human, then they would not have the means to sponsor Tsukiya to continue this sort of research. So in conclusion, either she misappropriated a part of the money that they sponsored her with, or there's some other sponsors. As for the reason that Futoumiya accepted the deal and arranged the meeting here, currently he has no idea why.

All he knows that, Futoumiya now may suffer the same consequences as Suzukawa.

"The motive for killing Suzukawa wouldn't simply just be to silence him," he points this guess out in the tone of a statement as he imagines Suzukawa being killed by an AI robot who looks exactly the same as him.

She thinks back to the last conversation that she had with Suzukawa and recalls the pathetic weakness in his tone. The corner of her lips go upwards a little. "To tell the truth, originally I didn't think of that, but he suddenly changed his mind and wanted to call quit."

She covers her mouth with the back of her hand and starts laughing out loud. "Five years passed before he finally decided that artificial intelligence should stop at the point of simply serving mankind, what a joke." She lifts her head and appears to stare at the ceiling leisurely. "The feeling of being killed by your own project must be very unique and different."

Seeing now as a chance, he rushes over and reaches for the gun, yet she grabs him by the wrist. He quickly reaches out his other hand, but gets stopped by her again.

"Now, enough time has been delayed."

With a kick from Tsukiya, Kudo Kuroba hits the wall heavily and his back starts aching badly. He feels pretty dizzy, and blood drips out from the corner of his mouth. He gently touches the back of his head and manages to stand up, although double images still appear from time to time. He didn't expect that a research scientist would have such quick reactions. He really regrets having underestimated the physical training that Tahou provides for its members.

Kudo Kuroba takes a few steps forward and then closes his eyes, and that image of Futoumiya being hit on the belly appears in his mind again. When he opens his eyes once again, there's no more double images and Saiesu Tsukiya is nowhere to be found. Turning his head back, he suddenly feels that a hand grabs his face and under this condition she dashes until he hits the human-fusing machine. He sees a chance and grabs that hand of hers, except the next second the palm of her other hand hits right on the shoulder of the hand that he reached out, and forces him to let go.

Upon opening his eyes, there's no double images to be seen, and when he touches the back of his head there is no blood gushing out. Except after the second hit, his body hurts even more with a sort of burning sensation mixed with the pain, and just standing up wastes him quite some energy. He manages to haul his weary body towards the experiment stand. She starts to attack without stopping, leaving him with no choice but to keep backing away in defense, although from time to time he fails to block her attack and still ends up with parts of his skin being purple. She sweeps the floor with her leg and hits his lower left leg. Before he could react, she takes another kick at the side of his knee, and another hit on the back of his head with her heel.

He kneels down, then along with his upper body leaning over a little bit, he literally just falls over with his face smacking the cold ground. He lifts his head and opens his eyes; some blood drips onto his clothing, although he notices not this dreadful situation but rather the fact that Tsukiya purses her lips. As if part of his consciousness flew out along with part of his sense of feeling, he only feels a slight pain that instant when he hits the ground. Yet this doesn't take away the stronger pain in other body parts which have not been cut, neither does it take away the psychological pain done on the inside.

She picks up the gun, and casually throws it somewhere as she says so: "It seems that there's no use for this."

The cold air passes by his face and pokes at the wounds. It seems as if his sense of pain has fully recovered, so he lets his head down and uses the reflection on the ground to look at himself. Then he wipes his face as he thinks to himself: "Good thing it's just some bruises."

"The potential of scientific research is unlimited and worth the time for us to explore; research should not be cut short because of some depressing and pathetic reason like fear."

She sees the chance and gives a kick at his chin. He lies on the ground all powerless and helpless, and then feels that a foot steps onto his back. "Since every one of you likes to disregard the power of science," she says as she bends down and tightly grabs some hair of his, "then let me create an army of AI 'humans' which can perfectly blend into human society, and let everyone know what they were wrong about." Then she presses his head down.

He attempts to lift his head up in resistance.

"I seem like a mad scientist, don't I?" Before he even opens his mouth to respond, she grabs and pulls his hair again. "But I'm different from Suzukawa, a guy who only knows to speak without taking action does not qualify to be dubbed such a name." As she says so, she releases his hair again. "Oh yeah, you've probably already guessed it," she says and then takes a look at the human-fusing machine behind him; Haibara's voice appears in his mind simultaneously as Tsukiya speaks: "you're not human." With that, everything that happened over the past few days start repeatedly playing in his brain like a movie.

That is, until Tsukiya's voice shatters them into pieces: "You're just one of the experimental artificial intelligence lifeforms that combined Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba's way of thinking along with their consciousness, just one of my projects."

"Futoumiya..." as he says so, he spits out some blood and then wipes it away using his sleeve as if nothing happened, "no, I should say that Tahou must have stopped the development of the research in actualizing AI simulation of human because people like you go too far in your worship-like behavior towards artificial intelligence, and will result in AI invasion and the extinction of humankind in the end."

As if insane, she cannot stop herself from laughing out loud, and this time she doesn't even bother to hide that twisted and even ugly look on her face. "What a joke, all I ever worship is just the potential of science and never artificial intelligence itself. You're just an AI lifeform," she says as she looks at him on the ground who struggles to get forward with disgust, as if she's looking at trash, "what right do you have to judge me."

"In order to achieve your goals, you're willing to use whatever methods you can, including killing others..." His voice is a little hoarse. "People like you won't prevail and get away with it." He continues to crawl towards the experiment stand as he talks, as if there at that colorless place exists a streak of light.

Tsukiya walks over and blocks his way, so he starts changing his direction and trying to make it around her. A black shoe then steps on both of his arms and dismisses his ability to move forward, as if he were in chains again.

"What's with you crawling like this," she says as she moves her leg away, "stand up." This sentence serves as a driving force injected into that broken down body of his and makes miracles happen. With his fists clenched tight, he manages to support his whole body and make his way back up with his shaking arms.

She then steps onto his back, and from that smile on that face it seems as if she really enjoys and gains satisfaction from torturing others. "Stand up and fight." That little bit of weight pressures him down like with a heavy rock. He feels as if all the bones in his body are about to fall apart.

He manages to stand up on those shaking legs, and so she has to move her leg away. Except he hasn't stood up straight yet when she takes another sweep on the floor and hits his lower leg. If it isn't for her using not as much power in the last kick, maybe he would have been unable to sustain and kneel down on the ground again. Or maybe it's because the willpower of the originals, Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba, happen to be so strong to the point that this body which is pretty much close to good-for-nothing can still withstand that devil's attack. Again and again, he gets up to receive another blow from her, and having nearly reached success but having to start all over.

What is it that drives a person to have such hatred, they cannot understand. What is it that drives a person to have this sort of determination, she has an even harder time of understanding.

Pathetically rolling about in a puddle of blood, just to overcome that fate that's already set. Maybe she got touched by this sort of persistence, so she doesn't continue to attack that structure, that structure used to have this immature project be able to walk.

She takes the remote and clicks the screen a few times. Seeming to have disregarded him who was forwarding slowly, she chooses to walk towards the human-fusing machine and quickly types away at the computer keyboard. Something that appears to have something like a timer appears in the middle of the fusing machine, then she walks towards somewhere where a bunch of tools have accumulated. Out of all of them, she chooses a most simple tool which happens to be a pair of scissors. Then she unhurriedly walks back to the experiment stand.

"Since you care so much about these unintelligent human, then I'll give you a chance." As she says so, she returns the remote back to the pocket on the inner side of her big white lab coat. "Left or right," she says as she reaches her hand out, "tantei-san or the phantom thief magician," and then passes the scissors, "you choose."

Along with the sound of electrical currents in his mind, black and white snowflakes appear before his eyes. Those aren't because of dizziness due to the blow that he received on his head, nor do they have to do with earlier double image problems or any illusion.

Seeing that he seems to not be able to move, Tsukiya pushes him. Looking at the timer before his eyes, he feels that more and more snowflakes are appearing, and that the sound of electrical currents appear more and more often. Yep, that condition only occurs when the system cannot function normally.

After all, it's just a lowly AI lifeform. Not to mention, facing the two life-and-death lines which link to the fate of the two before him, even normal human cannot make the decision so easily.

To kill, to rescue, or to go to hell together? Shall the messenger of justice who wears a sakura badge be chosen, or shall it be the ordinary citizen who once wandered out during night?

Everything depends on how the scissors in his hand are worked, even if he knows that he'll lose no matter which path he takes.

He...or they ultimately lose all paths of the human world while they walk the path which seeks the truth.

The path of life is long, yet it seems to end right here.

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人工知能Jinkouchinou means artificial intelligence, in chapter 10 only the first syllable jin was revealed. Jin stands for 人human, other pronunciations for this character include hito and nin.

The next chapter, also the ending chapter of the main story is a long one that's about 1.5 times the length of an average chapter; I'll have some other stuff to say so don't be surprised when you see a super long chapter/receive a notification of an update that may be a couple of thousands of words. And then there's four parts to the epilogue.

Though at this point who and why is pretty clear, there may still be some details that you don't really get or maybe they confuse you quite a bit when combined, so really—don't hesitate to ask questions.


	14. Chapter 13(Ending)

This chapter is really long, even if you disregard my long babbling at the end. The chapter itself is about 1.5 times the length of a normal chapter.

* * *

Tsukiya takes the remote and walks towards the surveillance room. "Well then," she says when she turns to him who looks as if he doesn't know what to do, and then to the two original bodies which have been sleeping for a good amount of time, "there's not much time left, it's not too late if you want to beg for mercy." She stands at the door and lets out a smile of satisfaction. It seems that she had anticipated his choice very early in the game, so she doesn't stay for too long. She takes a look at the time left on the screen of the remote and then walks behind those two glass doors.

As time flies away every second, multiple scenes which occurred over the days repeatedly play in his brain like a movie. When they first found out about this body being a combination of two people, it was so hard for them to believe it, yet now when realizing that he himself isn't human, he accepts the fact so easily.

When they stare at those two wires through his eyes so anxiously, on the other hand she awaits for how things come out to be in an extraordinary calm manner, as if those doors separate them into two completely different worlds.

Life or death all depends on that one moment. Maybe there's still some chance that it'll work out if the risk is taken, at least that's what they think. So, he reaches for that black wire with the hand that's not occupied, and no longer thinks of the existence of the white wire. With those scissors in hand, he's in charge of the ever repeating fate.

In the cold air, the crisp sound of glass resonates. Sparks of fire splatter in all sorts of directions. Oh so dazzling, so beautiful, so catching to the eyes like jewelry. Layers of smoke linger around.

It's impossible for projects which disobey her to end up with a pleasant fate, especially this kind that doesn't even know to kneel and bow down to beg for mercy.

He just lies there without moving, and to coat the surface of his body which is already covered by many wounds is a layer of dust. The face must already be an unappealing blur of bloody flesh by this point. Only that chip in the brain which is connected to the main system in the clinic and that artificial heart are worth the trouble to retrieve.

Smoke gradually dissipates, yet the beeping sound is like a magical curse which cannot vanish from the ears.

Tsukiya has her eyes opened up wide. "Impossible..." she cannot help but speak her mind as she's deeply shocked.

He didn't touch any of the wires. Behind the broken glass lies two uninjured people. And the timer on the bomb hasn't stopped yet.

Tsukiya turns to look at Kaito Kuroba, and then at her AI project. She starts kicking him uncontrollably without conserving any power, and all he does is moan a few times as he rolls on the ground. This time there's nothing else besides anger and hate, just plain violence. She has forgotten all intentions. The more she attempts to release her anger, the more anger simply accumulates within. She cannot be stopped.

They should have been sent on the path to the afterworld, leaving just a corpse of bloody flesh blur, and not have any chance to live anymore. Yet, even when it's time for death, they still had him use his magic skills on the tools to buy some time. What's the point of doing that anyway? What is it that he still persists? What's the reason that makes all of this worth the effort?

So annoying! Why would there be people so stupid to the point that they'd rather not die quick and easy with the snap of two fingers. Is this it, how they'd rather have things be?

Over and over again, he gets hit and collapses on the ground again. Even if he cannot get up, he still doesn't give up to fate. It should be time for this sort of sad life to end already.

With this kind of thought in mind, she steps on his right hand with one foot and lifts the other one up high. Then down it goes so turbulent as it brings a cold wind, sharp as a guillotine.

With a grieving utter, the skeleton below her feet creaks and grates. The warm skin and flesh being covered under blue fabric rips and separates to become of atypical shape. Blood cannot stop flowing as it stains the clothing red. That arm, unfortunately, is probably useless by now.

He has no way of struggling free, yet those eyes of hers still seem to signal extreme dissatisfaction. She's dissatisfied of that physical body almost being disabled, yet it still has a breath left. So inside, her anger still cannot be calmed. She still won't let it go.

Color gradually disappears before his eyes, yet those eyes are still as clear as before. That of which shows from the look in his eyes isn't the pain and desperation like imagined. He's always like this, always having the light and glory conceal the ugly and impure. Even now, he still manages to maintain a fake image of the virtuous, unwilling to unmask.

Even when that human skin which joins with the bones and muscles has already rotted, even when trapped within a non-human being, he still hasn't changed.

Snowflakes continuously appear on the screen, black and white start to take over his vision, and even his hearing starts to blur up. Some sound pops up from time to time. There appears to be directions given and commands. Although he's not too sure of how many people came, he's very sure that the two leaders are dressed in black. Must be the first party—

Under the purplish-gray sky, there's a black desolated grassland. On that grassland, there's just a kid who's continuously pushing wild grasses aside until he finds a road that's truly flat. On the edges and corners of this road, one can see some bumps and hollows, quite some imperfections. Seeing this, he just laughs a little and continues to walks, until the sky turns to marine blue and that sun in the sky turns to a dazzling gem emitting an aquamarine glimmer. Then he came to an intersection. Two roads of black and white are placed before the kid along with a sign that has two blood red words pointing two directions which read good and evil.

He doesn't bother to consider the words written in blood. As if feeling that walking on a flat road serves no interest to him, he decides to choose neither and thus just walks straight forward. Smoke covers his eyes, and cold air approaches from all directions. Silver white moonlight opens up layers of haze, and the chains on his feet gradually split into pieces. Like snow encountering spring, everything in the environment turns into clear water. He floats in the ocean, only to see something being separated from his body, a black silhouette, by some mysterious power. He himself happens to be white from head to toe in contrast.

Fiery red light as brilliant as a bright pearl miraculously lives and attracts the white-clothed pandora-gem seeker. When that person disappears, he also somehow uncontrollably gets attracted by some sort of mysterious power and wants to get closer to it so that he can touch that light. Before his fingertips could reach, the next moment that bright pearl cracks open. The smell of rusted iron accompanies fresh blood as it flows out and gets washed away by sea water. In that little bit of red left over he sees infinite strands of strings of destiny which link to everyone, including himself and that devil behind the psychological consultant mask—

The first thing that Shinichi Kudo notices upon waking up is the crisp "tick-tock" sound which travels into his ears. He immediately opens his eyes up wide and looks around. Not until he sees that clock on the wall does he let out a sigh of relief. Sizable sweat drops still cling on his face. He looks at himself in the mirror, and everything's the same as usual. There's also no existence of another person's voice in his mind to disrupt his train of thought. In the large Kudo Residence, all that's left is the sound of his footsteps as he walks around, the snoring sound of Agasa-hakase which happens to get more and more similar to thunder, and the beautiful tweeting sound of birds outside.

The long night has ended. The light of the early morning is still as bright as ever; it travels through glass and through the window of one's heart, finally coming to warm the heart.

After checking the date and time, he changes into clean dry clothes and steps into the sunlight, only to see a black car driving towards him from faraway and that an old friend has come.

"Kudo-san, how's your recovery?"

"Fairly well," says Kudo as a smile appears on his face, "Futoumiya-san, what brings you here today?" He takes a spin on the topic and goes for business right away.

"Well then, pardon me for taking some of your time," says Futoumiya as he pats Kudo's shoulder and then walks into the grounds of the Kudo Residence, "has to do with your request." He only hints at it with a few words.

A cold wind comes into the Kudo Residence, which reminds Kudo of the days at Suzukawa's lab and for the most part at Tsukiya's Psychological Consultation Clinic.

Hakase who has already awaken helps brew a pot of tea and then silently sits to the side.

There's no longer any bruises on that handsome face from days ago. This time with their meeting, Futoumiya no longer has that smile on his face. Even though the person in front of him still has a poker face on, but at least he doesn't put on an act. To Kudo, this actually makes him feel that getting along is much easier.

"Actually," he says, appearing really sincere, "we've always been looking for a justifiable chance to deal with Tsukiya." He lifts his head up to seek for eye contact, while Kudo just stirs his tea very calmly. The spoon in his hand collides with the side of the cup from time to time and makes a crisp noise.

"Gotcha," says Kudo who maintains a smile, although from what Futoumiya says he figures that he was definitely tricked by him, "in order to fool the enemy, one must first fool their companion." The tone of this sentence is rather light, as if he's telling a joke. "I sure get it."

After all, there's no such thing as coincidence in this world; all there is happens to be the detailed planning of human and that of which results from what humans think about deep inside.

Futoumiya has already seen Kaito Kuroba before this. He's very clear of the fact that they're not trapped inside one body now, yet somehow he feels as if quite some time passed by that they now possess certain traits of one another.

"The mute Mai happens to be one out of the earliest batch of artificial intelligence humans that Tsukiya created. Thus, its intelligence level does not match that of later ones. In fact, it's closer to a robot."

"It's that girl," Hakase suddenly interrupts, "a few days ago she came here, and it seemed as if she wanted to kill people."

"If I recall correctly," before Kudo could respond, Futoumiya answers, "that day, Kudo-okusan came home just in time and helped to defeat Mai."

"Right, and we didn't tell her the specifics because we didn't want her to worry. She's out shopping for groceries now with Ai-chan."

And then it suddenly quiets down.

"Speaking of which, it scared the hell out of me," Hakase says and then takes a sip of tea, "that the child could actually speak."

"Right, the saying that she's a mute is just to cover up the fatal flaw to Mai being an AI human."

"I sweat cold sweat just thinking back to that situation. At first, it was just that I couldn't hear any emotion in her voice, but then when she woke up after getting knocked out, that voice..." Towards the end, he feels that his throat is a little sore, so he gulps down a little bit of water, "it was like it came from a machine, an actual machine."

After hearing Hakase's statement, Shinichi Kudo just silently shuts his eyes. The scene with him and Kaito Kuroba facing against Saiesu Tsukiya still remains clear and distinct in his mind. Although she's different from Mai, but when her true look got exposed, he felt as if he was facing a real devil and not human. Those wounds which supposedly belonged to an artificial body have deeply cut into his soul, never to heal.

When he opens up his eyes, Futoumiya starts to tell the story of AI-san—

It slowly opens its eyes, only to see that there's no one else in the room besides it. The cool lighting shines upon its face which sort of has a hue of human skin. Now, its mind is clearer than ever without all sorts of thoughts being mixed together. The injuries which it once had also miraculously disappeared, as if that battle never happened. The only excess thing now, are chains that somehow reassures it.

Not long afterwards, Futoumiya who saw that it woke up from the camera walks, pulls a chair over, and seats himself down in front of it.

"You're...Futoumiya-san." The tone of that voice is very ice cold, perhaps one may even call it monotone. Behind the human voice disguise, one could kind of get at its mechanical nature.

"Would you mind if I address you as AI-san?"

"Why no, no I would not mind at all." It manages to put a smile on.

First of all, it searched for human manners in its mind, retrieved memory related to normal day communication from some corner of its database, and then sent out a command to control facial muscles from its brain. Within this period of time, many complicated codes instantly went past the screen of the remote in Futoumiya's hand. As for on the surface, the reaction time that it used, was 0.3 sec., with is the average human reaction time.

"Well then, AI-san, I would like to invite you to join our organization." With that, he waits a while for it to respond. "Sorry, was I too straightforward?" he adds on a few seconds later.

It's able to analyze and reach the conclusion that although Futoumiya is just representing Tahou by throwing this invitation out to it, he's not being perfunctory. In fact, he's very sincere. After all, its ability in all aspects is a copy of Shinichi Kudo and Kaito Kuroba. On top of that, it has an individual smart learning system on its own.

By using the system's own function to check the time, it's very clear of the fact that a full twenty-four hours has passed since it fell unconscious. Within this twenty-four hours, those injuries could not have recovered to this degree, which means that Tahou has done stuff to it and fixed everything for it including its internal system. Of course, they must have examined its internal system as well, not to mention using some other smart system to connect with its consciousness and let it be able to regain consciousness and awaken. Everything that it thinks of and analyzes now must be all recorded by them.

Except, none of this matters to it.

Futoumiya still puts on a poker face as he observes AI-san with great interest along with the misery and frustration that it uncontrollably shows.

"As an artificial intelligence human, I'm growing every single day by many times the speed of regular human," it says and then bites its lower lip a little. "Someday in the future, I may become too powerful and threaten mankind," it says as it stares directly at Futoumiya's eyes, "won't I?"

He carefully takes a look at it. It seems like it's at the point of breakdown where a little tremble is actually added to that plain tone, and it appears that there's a slight bit of terror in its eyes.

"Maybe, but this doesn't mean that you definitely will."

It knows that Futoumiya's slight hesitation before answering isn't just because he had to formulate his thoughts into words, so it feels even more empty on the inside and it hates itself even more.

Yet this situation is a little beyond his expectations. It seems that it may have self-initiated a type of human emotions and feelings learning program.

"I'm..." it seems a little moved emotionally, "the work of a villain."

Futoumiya doesn't say anything. He just listens to what AI-san has to say and silently observes it who is closer to human much more than ever before.

"No matter how hard I learn from human, of how to be a lifeform made from flesh, in the end the purpose of my creation is to help the villain win control over mankind..."

Maybe he should say something now, but he knows that whatever he says cannot beat the harsh reality coming out of its mouth.

It must really be afraid that it'll get out of control. It doesn't know what path to take and what to do. So then does an organization which doesn't take clear stance, does an organization that lends a hand out to stop things only in the situation that large-scale evil is done, does an organization that one can never actually get away from even when one quits actually suit it?

"Tahou isn't an organization that takes clear positions between good and evil."

Maybe it's because he's starting to feel empathetic towards it. A sentence that seems like just a statement of fact, happens to also come from his heart. After pausing for a few seconds, he continues: "But we can assign you to a research group that can help benefit mankind according to your needs, and we will always monitor your thinking system to ensure that no problems arise."

"Please let me die, I should not and I no longer have any reason to live on this world," AI says with no more trembling in its voice, as if it already made its mind up. "Let me die, this is the only thing that I can do for mankind." Sincerity shows in those eyes.

"Understood." He doesn't try to persuade it at all, he just gets up and leaves.

Because following its wish, is the most basic respect that they can pay to it—

"What about the other AI?" Kudo's voice returns to the calm tone that it usually is.

"Tsukiya's testimony wasn't free." With Futoumiya saying this, the entire atmosphere falls into a deathening silence. "For her to be willing to tell us the complete info of other AI lifeforms, including the research and experimentation process, there was one single condition that had to be met. That is, she wanted to die, and she wanted them, her projects, to die with her as well."

Kudo doesn't say anything, until Futoumiya gets ready to leave.

"Futoumiya-san, please say hello to Mutou-san for me. Last time when we met at the psychological consultation clinic, we were too caught up with more important business that there wasn't any time for us to talk a little like in the olden days."

When Hakase first hears this name, he doesn't remember who it is, until Futoumiya turns around and smiles that creepy mysterious smile of his just like when they first met eleven years ago. "Thanks for Kudo-san's message at the time, I'll remember to tell him."

"Why no, really, it was Mutou-san who stopped me from going to the lab at UTokyo and disguise as Mai. All I did was just tell him that you didn't come."

Kudo still remembers, when he found out that Futoumiya already found the lab at the time, the first thing that popped up wasn't surprise but rather a complicated feeling.

Futoumiya doesn't bother to provide an explanation, instead he just smiles and nods his head before driving away.

Many days have passed since then. The organization that had always gone against Kaitou Kid got destroyed, and Miai who happens to actually be a high-ranking member of the organization got arrested as well.

This day, Shinichi Kudo fell asleep in front of a stack of info like always, and then wakes up again some time later. Kaito Kuroba works his favorite jewelry appraisal job like always as well as he immerses himself in the dazzling beauty of jewelry.

The city night is still noisy. Many colorful lights overlap on the street. Kaito Kuroba just finished attending a jewelry exhibition. Because he drank a little wine, he decides to walk home while also clearing up his mind a little by breathing in some fresh air. It may be because he's having illusions due to being under the influence of alcohol, but he seems to see a familiar figure walking towards him. The sound of car horns is hurting his ears. Hazy moonlight elongs their shadows.

At that one moment, two pairs of eyes meet up and they brush pass each other. Everything just seems like extremely long dreams which overlap at some point and then go their separate ways.

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Super long babbling from me:

 **(: 3) All parts of the epilogue will be uploaded as I finish translating them, currently still have 3 parts to translate.** It's mostly first-person from our mad scientist's perspective in terms of the first 4 parts and it kinda just goes through her life, how she got to the point she did and everything. The 5th part is actually completely written in third-person and is mainly about others. I don't ask anyone to like our antagonist here, I know I definitely don't all that much considering what she did to people, but I would like to think that readers may change opinion of her a little bit and feel that you know and understand her better.

Anyhow first of all, I want to thank everyone who was able to make it to here, because I honestly did mostly direct translation and some sentences and details don't come out as good as they would've been if this novel was written in English from scratch. Although it may not have been evident, generally speaking my English writing proficiency is better than Chinese, but as many things are contradictory, my passion for writing doesn't really lie with English.

There are many sentence structures and literary usages that are very different between the two languages, so with certain things I decided to abandon direct translation and go with whatever holds about the same meaning. And, uh, well as you see, this is the result. Better versions, hopefully, will come out in the future when I make more significant edits to the whole story.

Despite the fact that mystery's pretty frustrating to write, it does happen to be one of my favorite genres. One of my biggest joys which many of you may find really annoying, happens to be incorporating factors that will drive my readers nuts and make them find the plot or some aspect unpredictable, especially with mystery.

And I'm pretty sure that unless someone who already read this spoiled it to you or something like that, you were only likely to guess things like them two being in one body, Futoumiya setting things up on purpose, Tsukiya being the biggest villain at the end, maybe even our "main character" being non-human, etc.; not the fact that our "main character" is actually an AI lifeform and not a physical combination of two people until you got to read it, cause if you did then we'd have to discuss why you've been reading my mind.

Enough of blah blah blah that many of you probably don't care enough to read. **I would guess that the majority of you still don't quite understand many of the settings, well then, feel free to ask if you've got anymore unanswered questions. I'm just gonna go ahead and talk about the "fusion" of Shinichi and Kaito, how it actually works and stuff.**

First of all, they were never actually physically fused together like I said in the paragraph before the last paragraph, and that so-called human-fusing machine isn't an actually fusing-machine. It's just used to store their original bodies and get their brains connected with the main system at the clinic and supposedly the lab at UTokyo for monitoring purpose. That thing's essentially the same structure with The Dream Exploring Machine despite appearances being different.

As for the whole time Shinichi and Kaito were unconscious, their brain waves were sent to the chip in the clone's brain through the main system, and they temporarily "occupied" this body.

This clone, happens to be AI-san.

Basically, the body itself is an actual human body made from flesh, except it wasn't born naturally but rather cloned into the image of Shinichi/Kaito. If you're wondering by any chance, no, AI lifeforms are not exact clones of any existing person but pretty much all of them are products of genetic engineering, meaning their body parts are most likely clones of others—or not, that's for me to think through in more detail in the future although my scientific knowledge most likely won't accumulate much more than now.

Anyhow, back to the main point, scientists will be scientists, humans will be humans, Suzukawa and Tsukiya obviously wouldn't let their experimental products that they worked so hard on be able to roam wild and free all they want. So the difference between the AI lifeforms and normal people in this novel, happens to be that there's a chip in their brain, and the only organ they have that's really more of a machine is the heart.

Under these conditions, in order for the AIs to functions, they must have a main system that they're connected to. They who do not possess human hearts, when not influenced by the brain waves of others as in actual humans, supposedly cannot feel real human emotions and feelings.

AI-san is a later project, and yeah most likely the last I would say. In the beginning he often passes out, that's because Suzukawa and Tsukiya never used real living people to experiment the thing with "connecting" two brains.

At first his body wasn't all that used to it, not to mention Shinichi and Kaito and especially Shinichi at the point were in rather feeble physical conditions with the bodies.

We really should give our mad scientists some acknowledgement though, at first Haibara didn't get that AI-san wasn't human.

It's mainly because they made his DNA sequencing very similar to Shinichi and Kaito, as in what it might've been if they were actually fused together. The thing with a face, pretty easy to get one that looks the same, but man with DNA, phew.

So then why would Haibara have a way to figure out that he's not human? That's because there's a specific gene that doesn't exist in nature, and neither is it one as the result of mutation, at least not one that she could find a record for.

That is to say, all of the above comes from my wild imagination, so don't be so nit-picky with details. This brain contains absolutely zero advanced knowledge of genomics and AI and other scientific stuff. The more important thing that Haibara realized is the fact that as a "fusion", he still had two separate brain waves controlling one brain and one body.

I mean so yeah, it's pretty easy to believe that this guy didn't develop a second personality or something since his rationale still exists and he's able to analyze normally. Not to mention them two being able to communicate directly and analyzing with their own point of views simultaneously. So with this abnormal situation, Haibara had to think outside the box, although this was done mostly for my own convenience.

 **Here's a basic summary in case I confused someone even more: Shinichi and Kaito's brain waves got connected to AI-san's brain, thus they were able to occupy and control his body while their own bodies were asleep for this whole time.**

Let's see, what else is there that I can babble about…

Oh yeah, I somehow decided to use mostly last names to refer to Shinichi and Kaito in this novel, probably kinda as a thing to show that they're no longer children but true active members of society, adults who have to wear a mask, conceal stuff, and learn to think in certain ways and take certain paths even if they get lost sometimes like they did when they were young. Another thing is that, it shows a sense of unfamiliarity and more serious formality between the two and during the whole scenario.

Finally, something that's related to this novel but really really miscellaneous: this novel is the direct product of jealousy between good ol' friends.

What? I know, crazy right?

Basically, my good ol' friend YY requested me to write something for her as a birthday gift in 2016. So I did, and it ended up being a really short original piece that's seven thousand some characters total in length. I sent it to her, and she posted it to qzone, a social media site. My other friend LL saw it, got jealous, and said that she wanted a birthday gift as well that was no shorter in length and the quality cannot be any more worse than YY's.

Ok dude, technically speaking I stopped writing people birthday gifts years ago and only broke my own saying because me and YY are super best buds. Like, how could I turn her down?

Oh what the heck, you know what, I'll do it. You now owe me a birthday gift too.

So then I waited until like about a year later to actually think about what to write for her. She likes Kaishin so I was thinking of writing a few thousands, very short piece. Then I realized, I didn't know what to write. Some of you might want to slap me for saying this but I wasn't good with normal lovey-dovey stories, or more that I didn't wanted to write those. I don't have a particular interest in Kaishin, so I had no good idea in mind. I wanted something unique, something only I could come up with.

So yeah, probably have to incorporate something with them being on opposite sides. Like, have it be a few years from now and throw in some good cases.

Wait, but I don't wanna write the same old mystery-solving processes and make it a long novel.

Then voila, I thought "unique, unique, what is there", then "combination of Shinichi and Kaito in one" came to me.

Then throughout the process of just planning basic plot and detail since there was still school, some time later I thought that I could incorporate some more twists.

I got to just abandoning the original thought of writing Kaishin 'cause for me it's just better off to focus on plot rather than experiment how to incorporate it when I didn't really know how to. LL was fine with that so yeah.

Eventually I got to start writing the actual story with the start of last summer. And guess what, I finished before school started. Then I got the idea of an epilogue during the school year, and eventually got to finish the last part with the beginning of this summer.

: ) Yeah about my birthday gift, my friend LL had a really rough time with school cuz that's how China rolls. I mean she has more time than she ever did than the past few years now during this summer, but it seems like it might take at least a year or two for my birthday gift story to get completed. Friends aren't friends for no reason. That is, procrastination definitely flows in our blood.

Well, that's about it. **I might get to translating and uploading my other piece which is a Shinran piece that's already finished some time in the future, but I want to get to really focus on the long piece that I still haven't finished and probably won't be for the time being.**

 **I'll be starting a new short piece and then uploading the Chinese version during July, not here obviously. I may or may not get to translating and uploading the English version to FanFiction during next summer, but definitely some time in the future.** It'll probably be mostly an autobiography piece of Fusae, with some hints of her love with Hakase, but I'll pretty much be keeping their relationship the same with the original so not something you should be looking forward to all that much if you like a sweet romance piece.

Last sentence finally, I know, hope you enjoyed the main story and look forward to the epilogue!


	15. Epilogue Part I

Five parts to the epilogue in total, three more parts to translate.

Just in case you skipped over my long babbling in the ending chapter and didn't get to read: The majority of the epilogue is mostly first-person from our mad scientist's perspective and it kinda just goes through her life, how she got to the point she did and everything. The last part of the epilogue is written in third-person and it's mainly about other people. I don't ask anyone to like our antagonist, I know I definitely don't all that much considering what she did to people, but I would like to think that readers may change opinion of her a little bit and feel that you know and understand her better.

The perspective does shift in the second half of the fourth and last part of the epilogue. How exactly does it shift? That's for you to figure out for yourself when you get there.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you're confused about anything: )

* * *

Eyes, those things that can roll around are everywhere. The moment upon stepping indoors, they all turn to focus on me; there's some tens of pairs of black and white watery bright ones. I could not help but feel disgust.

Silence, was only maintained for one instant; I could not count how many sounds mix together to contaminate the air. And so I cover up my ears with my hands to look out the window, my sight starts to darken, and the feeling of suffocation gets relieved a little.

A building decorated with all sorts of weird shapes and figures is surrounded by weird living creatures with short limbs and oddly composed face features. The uprise in the angle of the corners of their mouths, both legs leaving the ground from time to time to get over a rope—what meaning is there?

Hands clearly full of germs approach for this direction, so I couldn't help but to take a few steps back and turn to start running—

After getting in and closing the door, there's no lighting at all. It's very silent, the only sound comes from the entrance which I'm currently at. This makes me feel all the more at ease. Fingertips touch the wall, and a few seconds later I break the darkness which makes me feel at ease myself. The usual plain neutral colors appear before me.

In the plain and cold basement, is row after row of glass equipment which appear to hold nothing in them.

Sterilize, put on gloves, a protection mask, and safety glasses, and then set up the microscope. Observe, with that the tip of the pen smoothly goes along the paper, and perfectly sketches every detail. Turn the page, wait for splendid numbers to appear on the screen, and then record—

All sorts of noises, breathing, and things are mixed together. The air which wasn't pure to begin with is now even more unclean.

Just like observing the microorganisms in the basement, I'm also starting to observe these weird social animals—during the second week of school, I've become interested in studying human for the first time. Through observation, I've gradually become accustomed to their deformed looks.

The distortion in the angles of their face features correspond with different facial expressions and emotions. In their conversation, those pointless things are somehow treated like extremely significant matter.

Human, whose nature is unclever and tacky, seems to always have countless variables—

"What a weirdo, no wonder nobody plays with you."

"Never heard you talk before. You wouldn't happen to be a mute by any chance, would you?"

"Why don't you smile? No one likes a child who doesn't smile."

"Cold-blooded animal!"

I would hear such meaningless statements from time to time, and just like recording data, I also happen to have recorded these words without being aware of doing so. Although I don't take such useless comments to heart, it seems that my subconscious mind doesn't allow me to decide which memories to abandon.

Recording and analyzing are what make me feel the most comfortable, even if it's something so pointless like this—

I just feel really dizzy. My head's awfully heavy, and objects before my eyes have turned blurry. The only thing I could clearly see, is a little boy who cries for his "mommy" and runs faraway. Looking at the back of him, I could not help but feel rage burn inside of me. Right—not long ago I just beat him up. What's strange is that, I couldn't accurately sort out what just happened. All I remember is that he said something to me, and then this is what I face when I get ahold of my rational brain again—

"Your hair color is ugly." It was just another comment that doesn't mean anything, yet his face at the moment seemed to combine all malice; it was hideous, so hideous that nothing was its match.

As if I had temporarily lost my memory, that sentence was buried in my subconscious at that time period.

Enmity, hatred, and anger are the three that I feel the strongest out of all human emotions—

After having regained my reasoning, I start walking upon that shortcut path which I remember having taken more than a thousand times and heading for that house decorated by a rice yellow color and a dark brown color. When I get halfway there, a cry travels into my ears. I stop and turn to see a pink-clothed kid with her head put down while wiping her face, as if unaware of how hideous she seems now. A woman with a few clear wrinkles walks over with her lips drooped down and her brows knitted together.

As for that little girl's crying, the woman doesn't do anything about it. She just grabs the sides of her head in pain and screams out loud, as if having no way to handle the situation.

I turn back and walk away without looking back at them. Instead of observing this sort of nonsense like I usually would, I feel a little frustrated. This is how it has always been, those lowliest things are what cause a full system to collapse so easily.

If not for any other interfering factors, that little boy must be the same way now.

Mankind, no matter where on this world, they're so alike—

I head for the basement. A cold air touches and passes by my skin, making me feel very at ease. I take a black office chair to sit in front of the computer that links to the whole entire system of the basement, and hit a few keys on the keyboard once it turns on. The glass display case by the side of the wall gets removed, then a robot who now is a head shorter than me comes out. I stand up to press its forehead using my pointer finger.

"What do you want to learn today?" Its robotic voice brings back memories from the past, yet those days when I had to pull a chair to stand on top of so that I could reach its forehead no longer exist.

I remain silent for a few seconds and blankly stare into space, not knowing how to answer.

"Why is mankind so stupid and foolish, so weak to the point that they cry for nothing so easily?" I couldn't help but blurt out what I was thinking about in my mind.

"System detection error, relating info and data was not found." Like a tranquilizer, that monotone voice let my system finally return back to normal mode.

"City ecosystem simulation…." I say using the same type of monotone voice, "using humankind as the main object of study."

"Command received."

Its "eyes" is a rectangular screen with a red light wave going up and down in a regular pattern from time to time. After some time of loading, a simulated model appears on the computer screen.

I carefully view every piece of data and points that the system concluded with its analytical skills, and then present my question to the robot like usual.

"The question that you ask, the system is unable to analyze and give and answer. Save and wait for an answer?"

I just turn away, close the entire system, and let it return to its original location. Its robotic voice still lingers in my mind as a blurry figure of someone pops up. So I close my eyes, and let everything return to total darkness.

Laying back on the chair, this is the first time that I've experienced so-called "helpless"—

I was sitting on a comfy sofa chair with a book when I suddenly heard the sound of footsteps coming from downstairs. The rhythm of those steps was awfully unfamiliar at first, yet I could somewhat pick it up from a distant corner of my memory bank. So should it be counted as familiar or not? I don't know. I put down the book and focus my eyes on the door. I don't know why, but somehow I feel as if someone will show up there at any time.

The sound of the footsteps instead become lighter and lighter. After the downstairs door gets closed, the sound of a car engine quickly travels into my ears.

He did show up, except not in at the door of the room, but beyond these windows.

That large white lab coat gets clearly embedded into my mind, yet that face is still as blurry as ever.

It's probably no different, just as deformed and twisted—

He pauses upon having just held the cup of tea in his hands, thinking about who knows what, whereas I just stand and wait for him to answer. A few seconds later he places the cup down on the table again without having taken not even one sip. Behind that pair of glasses, one could see a pair of bloodshot eyes with a melancholy shady look in them. Somehow these two years he appears skinnier than what I remembered; he seems really tired.

"Fine," upon saying so, he coughs a little, "but you're only skipping two grades so that there's not as much of an age difference between you and your classmates."

"Ok," I reply like so, and then turn to go downstairs and continue my study.

In the later days, everything's the same as always, as if nothing has changed—

"You're gonna graduate soon." That moment, it's as if I could see through skin and flesh to witness a skeleton with its jawbone opening up and then closing. "Saiesu...I beg you," with that, it's as if the whole world turned into black and white, "consider art for your college major."

Yep, in the later days everything's the same as always, including my hate for humankind.

His eyes are still bloodshot, but this time there seems to be a light in his eyes when he look at me; I can tell that he's very sincere.

"Ok." I don't bother to hesitate.

Except, when I spot that photo on the table, I feel that the person in there smiles way too dazzling—

People are dressed in all sorts of styles of bright and colorful clothes. They chatter and laugh with their small circle, seeming as excited as children. Only a few individuals find themselves engaged in their own small worlds as they carefully read and study from some textbook or paying keen attention to every stroke that they take in their sketchbook. Only when the professor starts taking attendance does the ruckus start gradually disappearing, except there will always be some rather loud whispering going around.

This sort of view isn't all that different from any other first days of school in the past years, except the people sitting in the classrooms are older.

The only thing that I have done in my lifetime is research and study, the only thing that I take into serious account to investigate deeply is science, and the only thing that I look forward to is inventing. The only point that an art major has to do with all this is just the fact that both inventing and making art requires creativity.

I never like fantasizing and imagining things out of nowhere, so I'm not all that interested in art. But it may be that I'm used to seeing the hideous, beautiful things always have a sort of attraction which I cannot pull away from, and so it's very easy for me to get lost in creating such things.

Art must have been all the more fascinating for that person—

I put down my brush and take a look at the clock as I wait for the professor to come and check and collect. Then I look around to see that others haven't finished yet. So I turn to look out the window and I realize that it has been cloudy the whole day today with no sun at all. The temperature outside much also be cool, with this thought in my mind, I feel more relieved.

After my last class of the day ends, I stretch a little and then gather my stuff to finally get on a taxi.

Under a black and white setting, the atmosphere inside is even more gloomy than the outside. Yet when I arrive, there's only a few people left, making it seem ever sadder.

I walk unhesitatingly to his coffin, kneel down, and then leave once I'm done saluting—

"So Miss, you originally majored in art and now you want to change your major to Life Science and Medical Bioscience. On top of that you also want to minor in Computer Science and Engineering, is that correct?"

"Yes." This time I also don't bother to hesitate, and there's a fire of determination in me that cannot get put out.

To me, what's most important has always been scientific research and invention, always. As for the others, they don't matter.

Today's just like yesterday, it's a comfy rainy and cloudy day—

These years that I've been working to earn my bachelor's degree, from time to time there's some people who call themselves scientists and people relating to specific research fields that come up to me saying that they want to hire me or collaborate with me. Yet, the majority of the projects presented to me are all some old and boring ones; there's little value to do such research. So I denied their offer using reasons such as I'll think about it, but it'll have to wait until at least when I graduate.

To tell the truth, I'm pretty disappointed, because of those so-called scientists, there are also researchers who have worked with my father.

When my father was still alive, the only reason that I decided to go along with his wish and choose the same major as mother, was to please him so that I would be able to receive the regular finances for daily uses and research. After having experienced an art major, if I straight up tell him that I don't want to be an artist, then according to all these years of my observation, father may feel a little guilty and sorry and thereby continue to support me with money and resources. As a result, my way to become a scientist would be easier.

However now it seems that, not everything will be like what I desire—

"Sorry."

I was on my way home when someone suddenly bumped into me. Then not far away, I catch sight a paper card that seems like a business card. I pick it up thinking that it may be what that person lost.

There's nothing out of the normal with the front, yet on the back it says "Saiesu Tsukiya-san, we await for your arrival."

I turn to see that the man has already vanished from sight.


	16. Epilogue Part II

Three more chapters until the epilogue's done and over with.

* * *

Six days have passed since then, yet everything's the same as usual. Except whenever I wake up and come home to see that business card, there's always this funny feeling which is difficult to describe—

"Excuse me for failing to greet you in a more proper fashion. We're nevertheless honored by your presence," says a man dressed in a black suit. He appears to be just a little over thirty years of age, yet he's seated on the CEO's chair.

I've never been good at handling this sort of situation, so when he reaches his hand out with a smile, I don't give any sort of response.

"Tsukiya-san must be really confused," he says as he takes his hand back, folds his hands, and then rests his chin on the back of his hands, "of the reason that we invited you here." With that, he tilts his head to my left and looks as me, as if looking forward to my answer.

That sort of posture of his has a sense of playfulness to it which makes me feel not that much at ease, and the confidence that lies with the way he said that sentence makes me feel all the more cautious.

Why would a so-called pharmaceutical development company order someone to leave me a business card by purposely bumping into me?

What kind of place did I actually come to? What will happen next? There's nothing here that looks out of the norm, but does that really mean that it's safe?

"Tsukiya-san."

I just now realize that his head is tilted in the other direction.

"Why yes, after all I'm just a college student." I randomly throw out some response thinking that I've been silent for a considerable amount of time.

"No."

He walks over to the window and draws the blinds open. A golden yellow sunset shines in, as bright as ever.

"Life is like the sun. It'll continue to shine bright until it sets ultimately."

It maybe because the sunset has just started, all things exposed under the sunlight can be seen clearer as opposed to when they were just exposed under indoor lights, including Mutou-san who stands next to the window.

"Young lady, you're a rising new star."

If something like a soul actually exists, then this instant I believe that I've met a soul of fifty, sixty years of age, yet that doesn't exist. He doesn't look all that old, so I'm guessing that at most he's just approaching his forties.

"Oh right, I forgot to introduce myself." The smile on his face doesn't change a slight bit at all, like a mask that cannot be taken off. "My name is Seno Futoumiya."

"As you know, I'm Saiesu Tsukiya. Nice to meet you." I walk over and reach my hand out first. A smile that never was there now appears on my face.

Besides me having a look that's similar to that of my mother's, the rest cannot be as father wishes, even when I've learned so-called smiling now.

In reality, nothing has changed, just like the sunlight still dazzles as bright as ever.

Then maybe like a normal interview and like casual chatting, he asks me what interests I have and I tell him scientific research and experiment, so then he has me get into the details. So then I tell him how I study all sorts of things including genetic engineering, cloning, and what sorts of stuff I've invented. He listens and comments a little from time to time along with some stuff that seems to be related to the philosophy of life. Yet unlike normal people, instead of pretending that he knows what I'm talking about, it seems that he does have some professional knowledge.

"We sincerely hope that you can join."

Our first meeting ended with this sentence of Futoumiya-san's, except he didn't clearly point out to me why he wanted me to join. Then every meeting followed just about the same procedures. Just like during a study, I'll repeatedly perform certain tasks, and then observe and record; it seems that talking with him has also become an unremovable part of my life.

"Tsukiya-san, would you happen to be interested in researching for us those fields that the outside world cannot reach?"

at his might be the thirty-ninth time which I cannot analyze and understand what he means with those words, but this time even though he still wears that poker face and still uses the same tone, I somehow sense a hope in his eyes unlike ever before.

"Would you happen to be interested in cooperating with us to create a new world?"

"Yes."

Without knowing what one's intention is, I normally wouldn't answer this sort of question so easily, but today I choose to answer.

Futoumiya just silently stares at me, and doesn't say anything.

At this point, and I don't even know why myself, but I'm actually looking forward to what'll happen next, instead of being cautious of everything like when I came here for the first time.

"Great," he says as he suddenly claps his hands and then holds them together.

I open my mouth a little wanting to say something, yet not knowing what to say.

This is when some sort of noise starts coming out in the office. A wall that appeared to be nothing else besides a wall suddenly opens up; white light shines out from there. Seeing him walk over, I also follow.

"Please."

From the outside, it appears to be just a normal elevator. But what need does a so-called pharmaceutical development company CEO have for installing a hidden elevator?

Even though I wonder so, it seems that there's no route for retreat to take now. I step into the elevator, and Futoumiya follows in after me. After the door closes, the elevator starts to go down. After some unknown length of time, it finally stops.

When the elevator door opens, what enters my view is a dark room. There's no windows inside the room, nor are there any office supplies. It's just a table composed of steel and wood along with two black office chairs; there's nothing else. After we walk into the room, Futoumiya snaps his fingers and the lights get turned on instantaneously along with the disappearance of the elevator. Now it's just four walls that surround us, making the current scene a locked room. However, there's an air vent on the ceiling which means that air does circulate in and out, so one won't die due to the lack of oxygen.

Although it appears that the only place where air can come in and out of may just be that air vent, and that slight seam between closed elevator doors, this place isn't actually as hot as expected. In fact, it's quite comfortable and the temperature of the room is pretty cool; in addition to the approximate amount of time that it took to get here, this should be the undergrounds.

By the matter of these days, I've only gotten to know a little bit of this company and Futoumiya himself, so of course I've got a load of questions and confusion.

Even so, I still choose to take the seat across from him without any hesitation. As I'm doing so, he takes a stapled stack of paper and a pen out from beneath the table. When I take a closer look, I figure that there's a drawer made of special material which is connected to the bottom side of the thin wooden table part. I think it should be a drawer made from unidirectional perspective glass.

"Please ask if you've got any questions."

I didn't spend too much time reading the contract in detail, because it's only a few pages off from twenty, and they also bolded the main points for me. There seems to be no problems with it. However, shall it be a normal contract signing process, there would be no need of going through such excess steps. In addition to that, although it's not with every sheet of paper, but sometimes there would be these slight marks on the edges, as if someone had once written something there and therefore left some imprinted marks.

Upon having written down the character *"月"(Tsuki)*, an interesting thought comes to my mind and so I decide to press down on the "cap" of the bottom of the pen. Nothing happens in response, it seems to just be there for decoration purposes.

This is when I catch a glance of Futoumiya staring off into space, as if not really focusing on the current scenario, which is quite rare.

I continue to study this pen, and then decide to twist the top part of the pen off so that it separates from the bottom part. It seems to really be a regular pen.

"Is there anything wrong?"

I don't know how to reply to that all of a sudden, so he continues saying: "This pen is quite special, I like it a lot."

This inspired me to press down on the cap of the bottom again. With that, a blue light shines from the inside of the bottom part of the pen all the way through to the cap.

Then I turn the pages and look over each of them with this light to discover that there's actually some writing on the edges. It's some rules and conditions written in invisible ink belonging to some unknown organization. On the last page under the signature line, it reads "sign your name here, you will create a new world with us: _".

"This…."

"Saiesu Tsukiya-san, I'm Seno Futoumiya of T20, you're welcome to join Tahou."

"..."I pause for a while, and then uncontrollably laugh a little and cover my mouth, "sorry..." I calm myself down a little and then start speaking again, "but how are you so sure that I will join?"

"Because you made it to this step."

I go on to take a closer look of the stuff written with invisible ink and figure that this is an organization with much unknown official info including its official name. What's actually made clear to me is the fact that this organization that they so call "Tahou" does not have a definite stance on things, its actual size isn't clear, and its members are scattered in all sorts of fields….but, what's most important is the fact that there's all sorts of studies that their science department does, and that their equipment and material must be really advanced.

As for profits, they're distributed evenly.

Not to mention, besides having established the highest ranked group of leaders, T20, there is no actual ranking with members. Joining and quitting all depend on the individual's will, and there is no requirement of time. Except without T20's permission, one may not simply tell others about Tahou.

Although their actual identity seems very obscure, but the conditions seem pretty nice.

Creating a new world together so to say….

I pick up the top part of the pen, write a stroke on the paper to make sure that I'm now using invisible ink, and then formally sign my name.

Might as well get some profit out of it anyway—

"Actualization of artificial intelligence simulation of human..." as he says so, the old man rubs his long white moustache.

"Yes."

"An interesting suggestion...well then," he pauses to take a look at the others, nineteen of them, "what do you guys think?"

"Tsukiya-san,"

"Yes?"

"How is it that you happen to have this experiment idea?"

Just like when I first met him a year and nine months ago, a smile appears on my face.

"Currently, no matter is it our skills in the area of cloning or the development of artificial intelligence, they're all top class. But, if we were to bring it to a higher level, we must combine the two to create an intelligent lifeform."

Just like the reaction that I gave that day when my contract was signed off, he also half covers his mouth. Except he doesn't laugh, instead he just wears that same poker smile on his face like always.

"A type of intelligent lifeform which can be mistaken for the real deal, but will still be within our control?"

"Exactly."

"Young lady, I knew from the very start that you'd be the type of genius we need."

"Why no."

It may be that the Futoumiya family has more influence on Tahou than it appears to be on the surface, or if may be that they've seen my talents during this period of time so they're actually willing to let me go ahead and do what I want.

Anyhow, after what Futoumiya said, they didn't really try to complicate matters for me. It was almost an immediate decision to have my plan pass through.

After the meeting ended, I see that there's a young man around fourteen or fifteen years of age beside Futoumiya and they look pretty similar. If I remember correctly, I did see him when I first came to the Tokyo division of Tahou. At the time, he was the one who first held his hand out, and that smile was the same as Futoumiya's.

Yet now, the way he looks at me is so unfamiliar when compared to last time. If it wasn't for he calling Futoumiya "uncle", I would still think that they're father and son—

It has been three months since that meeting, Futoumiya and his wife got into a car accident and Futoumiya died at the age of thirty-eight. Not long ago, the oldest member of T20 had just decided to retire and go back to his hometown. Now, T20 has two vacancies.

But none of this concerns me, for there's no value in dead people—

Today's a rare occasion for me to get to be on break, so I decide to come outdoors and stroll around. I was gonna just take a walk for a while and then return immediately after, but when I pass by a cemetery, I happen to hear someone else crying.

After father died, I don't think I've ever come before his grave.

It rains a little, and showers the tombstone along with the person in front of it.

The person beneath the tombstone passed away due to some unexpected illness. I did not bother asking what was the specific illness, all I know is that he was already in some late stage of the illness when he was sent to the hospital. In the end, a lot of money was thrown away, yet he didn't make it.

I don't know what's the purpose in him actually willing to live so undignified in his last days.

Life is fragile, and it seems that some people will never understand no matter how long they've lived.

People were born hideous, so one might as well die off well—dying of age and illness, that doesn't look good at all, might as well end it in the hands of oneself.

If I die, it must be because I want to.

* * *

*In case anyone might be interested, the character 月 by itself means moon, the characters for Tsukiya are 月野 and the characters for Saiesu are 才絵子.

Since I put the actual character in this chapter translation anyway, I might as well say some more about her name.

Now I may be off, but my interpretation of the characters' meaning come from their Chinese meaning; I would think that's not that big of a difference in Japanese. So yeah, here's how her name came about.

The character 月Tsuki like I said before means moon. To me, with my cultural background, what I've learned of Chinese legends, Japanese legends, and then combined with my own understanding, the moon represents beauty but also a sort of loneliness and coldness.

The character 野Ya is often seen in family names, that is, when pronounced No as in 野原Nohara. I chose to go with the pronunciation Ya because it's more similar to the Chinese pronunciation of Ye for this character, and just reminds me more in the term野心. 野by itself means wild, 心means heart, the term野心 which I don't know what it would be in Japanese, means ambition and may in certain context have a negative connotation in Chinese. When I think of 野心, my first reaction would be to think of a person who's really eager to obtain something including objects or maybe a position, and may go overboard for whatever he or she wants.

Then with her first name, I chose to make up a name that would sound close enough to how the Japanese would pronounce Science, which probably would be something like Saiensu.

One meaning of the character 才Sai is talent, I do not know about other pronunciations but I would guess that there would be one. Another meaning is just as in the Chinese terms 刚才just now and 才来just came.

I was debating between making the second character of her first name 園En or 絵E, both of which are often seen in Japanese girls' first names. Then I developed the additional setting that her mother was an artist, plus 才絵子 just seemed like a better name when put together so I decided to go with 絵, which by itself means draw, paint, sketch, etc; this character should probably also have another pronunciation which isn't used as much. The character 園 as in 園子Sonoko is generally pronounced as Sono in names I believe; it means garden.

子Su by itself means child, kid, and in some scenarios it refers to a son. It's often used in girls' names and will generally be pronounced as Ko.

So yeah, this is basically my train of thought when I came up with Tsukiya's name with my awfully basic Japanese knowledge and the Japanese keyboard along with the internet as resources, relying mostly on my Chinese when thinking of the meaning and significance that goes into a name.

As you can see, pretty long explanation for one name, which is why I'm not gonna bother explaining other OC's names unless someone tells me they would like to know. Can't guarantee that certain names will actually have any meaning in them besides me just putting together random/common characters and or family names that sound fine(as in pretty much all the really minor characters).


End file.
